Oregon Project: The development and evaluation of monitoring protocols to inform water resource decision making

Oregon Project

The development and evaluation of monitoring protocols to inform water resource decision making

October 2017 - December 2022

Personnel

Participating Agencies

METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Natural resource managers invest a considerable amount of resources on surveillance monitoring programs to track the distribution and abundance of species. Although these data can be useful when evaluating spatial and temporal trends for populations, using these data directly assumes the population dynamics signal is greater than the noise in the data that stems from the sampling process. This assumption is frequently unmet. An equally important consideration is the integration of monitoring and natural resource decision-making. Here we are evaluating the adequacy of long term monitoring data from San Francisco Bay-Delta to depict the status of fish populations and developing alternative estimators that can be integrated with water resource decision-making.

Research Publications

Research Publications	Publication Date
Peterson, J.T. and M.F. Barajas. 2018. An evaluation of three fish surveys in the Bay-Delta, 1995-2015. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science 16:4	December 2018
Nervino, S., T. Polley, J.T. Peterson, C.B. Schreck, M.L. Kent, and J.D. Alexander. 2024. Intestinal Lesions and Parasites Associated with Senescence and Prespawn Mortality in Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). Journal of Fish Disease 47(2) https://doi.org/10.1111/jfd.13876 \| Abstract	January 2024	Prespawn mortality (PSM) presents a major problem for population recovery of spring Chinook Salmon (<i>Oncorhynchus tshawytscha</i>) of the Willamette River basin in Oregon. In certain reaches and years, pre-spawning mortality has exceeded 90%. An archived collection of histologic slides of intestines from over 664 spring Chinook salmon collected since 2009 were evaluated. These included tissues collected from live, PSM, as well as post-spawned fish from the river, and artificially spawned broodstock fish held in captivity that were collected earlier in the summer. One consistent change observed during histopathological evaluation was degeneration of the intestinal epithelium and loss of villous structure, with concurrent severe enteritis. We discovered a natural progression of decline in epithelial integrity (EI) spawning and subsequent death. The majority of apparently healthy fish collected from the river in the summer exhibited high EI scores, with a mean of 68% intact epithelium across the study. Sexually mature fish (“broodstock”) that were spawned in captivity in September exhibited variable EI scores, with a mean EI score of about 35%. Fish that spawned naturally in the river and died later in the year (post-spawn river; late September – October), exhibited severe loss of EI, with a mean EI score of about 14%. When accounting for calendar day, there was a prominent accelerated loss of the intestinal epithelium strongly associated with PSM fish – i.e., while collected mostly in August, the intestines had similar EI scores (mean 13.5) to fall-collected post-spawn river. Hence, we suggest this accelerated gut degeneration is linked to premature senescence and is a histologic marker of PSM. Regarding parasites, <i>Ceratonova shasta</i> and <i>Enterocytozoon schreckii</i> were common in all groups of the salmon, although neither were statistically linked to either PSM or a decline in EI.
Kirsch, J.E., J.L.Day, J.T.Peterson, and D.K. Fullerton. 2018. Fish Misidentification and Potential Implications to Monitoring Within the San Francisco Estuary, California. Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management 9: 467-485.	December 2018
Duarte, A. M.J. Adams, and J.T. Peterson. Fitting N-mixture models to count data with unexplained heterogeneity: bias, diagnostics, and alternative approaches. Ecological Modelling	January 2018

Technical Publications

Technical Publications	Publication Date
Peterson, J.T., S. Whitlock, and A. Duarte. 2018. Evaluation of California Central Valley Project and State Water Project Fish Salvage Estimators. Draft task Completion Report to Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, August 2018, 23 pp.	August 2018
Peterson, J.T. and J.T. Deweber. 2018. Associations and quasi-extinction estimates for abundance indices and occupancy estimates for San Francisco bay delta fish species. Draft task Completion Report to Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, July 2018, 64 pp.	July 2018
Duarte, A. and J.T. Peterson. 2017 Fitting N-mixture models to count data with unexplained heterogeneity: bias, diagnostics, and alternative approaches. Task Completion Report to Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, 24 July 2017, 80 pp.	July 2017

Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Oregon Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Oregon Project

The development and evaluation of monitoring protocols to inform water resource decision making

October 2017 - December 2022

Personnel

Participating Agencies

Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Oregon
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources