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

This project is part of an ongoing research effort to understand how invertebrate prey resources colonize and use restored wetland habitats in the Duwamish River estuary, and industrialized waterway. The four sites being studied in this project consist of created channels, small embayments, and transplanted vegetation strata that were constructed between 2000 and 2006. In collaboration with the USFWS, researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have monitored fish and invertebrate populations four times since their construction. This project adds an additional year of invertebrate sampling at the sites, which will add to our understanding of the how biological function develops at restored sites. Research Objectives and Methods The purpose of this work is to collect invertebrate data for the Elliott Bay/Duwamish Restoration Program Monitoring Project, at 4 restoration sites and 2 reference sites on the Duwamish River in Seattle, Washington. Invertebrate samples are collected once per month from April through June. The invertebrate sampling will be conducted as part of a monitoring project under the Elliott Bay/Duwamish Restoration Program (EBDRP). The EBDRP Panel was established as part of a 1991 consent decree between the City of Seattle, Metro (now King County Department of Natural Resources) (DNR), and natural resource trustees . The restoration projects' construction and monitoring have been under the sponsorship and guidance of the EBDRP Panel of Managers, comprised of the City of Seattle, King County DNR, and the natural resource trustees, and follow the Intertidal Habitat Projects Monitoring Program monitoring plan (EBDRP 2000). The EBDRP project is a ten-year monitoring plan designed to determine if physical success and biological success criteria identified in the monitoring plan's restoration goals are being met. Monitoring Tasks 1. Collect fallout insect traps and invertebrate core samples at restoration and reference sites once per month from April through June. Identify invertebrates to species for taxa known to be important to juvenile salmonids and to order level for the remainder. Invertebrate Sampling Specific Tasks 1. Deploy and collect five fallout insect traps (tubs and platforms) in the estuary at each restoration site (Hamm Creek Estuary, Herring's House, Kenco, and North Wind's Weir) and respective reference site. 2. Collect 10 core samples at the restoration sites and their respective reference sites. 3. Identify invertebrates from the samples. Taxa known to be important to juvenile salmonids are identified to species and enumerated; the remainder is identified to order level