FY 2000 proposal 20101

Section 1. Administrative

Project location

Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives (RPAs)

Section 2. Past accomplishments

Section 3. Relationships to other projects

Section 4. Budget for Planning and Design phase

Task-based budget

Outyear objectives-based budget

Outyear budgets for Planning and Design phase

Section 5. Budget for Construction and Implementation phase

Task-based budget

Outyear objectives-based budget

Outyear budgets for Construction and Implementation phase

Section 6. Budget for Operations and Maintenance phase

Task-based budget

Outyear objectives-based budget

Outyear budgets for Operations and Maintenance phase

Section 7. Budget for Monitoring and Evaluation phase

Task-based budget

Outyear objectives-based budget

Outyear budgets for Monitoring and Evaluation phase

Section 8. Estimated budget summary

Itemized budget

Total estimated budget

Cost sharing

Reviews and recommendations

This information was not provided on the original proposals, but was generated during the review process.

Comment:

Comments: This proposal is intended to describe the link between effects of physical habitat variables, such as managed flows, to measurable biotic parameters and ecosystem processes. They suggest reasonably that because annual escapement of fall chinook salmon is large and relatively stable in the Hanford Reach, that geological template and hydrologic conditions are compatible with life history requirements of fall chinook salmon. Although there is a clear relationship of their study to fish and wildlife problems and to the Fish and Wildlife program, their proposal will not provide a clear understanding of why fall chinook escapement remains stable there. Objective 1 is based on examining the historical data sets to describe past conditions which then would be used for comparison with field data collected in objectives 2. It seems the usefulness of these will depend on availability and quality of these data. Objective 2 is to test how hydrological processes influence primary and secondary production. They intend to measure primary production and benthic invertebrate secondary production, but do not address fish production. They make no mention of the life history of fall chinook, which is likely, important here. In the last objective they plan to use biological and physical data sets from field studies to develop a predictive model describing the effects of the suite of physical habitat variables on the suite of primary productivity variables and on secondary production variables. No attempt is made to describe how these models would be used other than "they would be useful in the restoration of fall chinook salmon". On page 8 they maintain the project will examine changes occurring in the river hydrograph during the last 60 years and assess whether these changes have modified the biological integrity of aquatic communities citing Karr 1991, but never mention it again.

As one of the seemingly few proposals that seek to identify extant ecosystem processes that account for or contribute to healthy salmon populations (ISRP 1998), this proposed study will attempt to identify those processes and attributes of the Hanford Reach alluvial habitats that sustain the viable 'core' population of fall chinook. In this respect, it appears to use the Reach to identify fundamental aspects of the "normative" Columbia River that can persist even with total upstream regulation. In particular, they propose to quantify the relationships between regulated flows and ecological processes. Although complex interconnections among groundwater, alluvial floodplains and surface water have unquestionably been altered by regulated river flow, it is apparent that abiotic and biotic conditions within the Hanford Reach are still (?) compatible with the spawning, incubation and early life history requirements of fall chinook under these conditions. Their approach is synthetic, e.g., taking advantage of diverse existing datasets and on-going studies. While objectives and methods are unspecific, and seem to describe an exploratory rather than hypothesis testing approach, the analytical process and predictive model should advance our state of knowledge appreciable, perhaps to the stage that directed hypothesis testing can then proceed. The weakness of the proposal is the lack of specific lines of investigation, much less emergent hypotheses; proposers appear to be casting about for emergent properties through statistical and modeling of as many different relationships as possible.

Comment:

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Explain how information gained through this project translates into management actions.

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