Description
The Middle Sacramento River Juvenile Salmon and Steelhead Monitoring Project at Knights Landing operates a monitoring site near the town of Knights Landing (rkm 144), consisting of paired, 8-foot rotary screw traps leashed together and anchored in river. Salmonid emigration data collected at this site provides an early warning of fish emigrating toward the Delta and allows for real-time adaptive management of CVP/SWP water operations. Monitoring begins when water temperatures decrease in the fall allowing for the safe handling of trap captured fish, usually occurring mid to late August, and will continue until the end of June, or until water temperatures increase and safe handling of trap captured fish becomes a concern. Trap catch is counted, identified to species, measured, and weighed. For salmonids specifically, data collection includes enumeration by run, life stage designation, fork length measurement and wet weight for assessing condition of individual fish.
Project Need
Recent updates to the operating criteria of the Central Valley Project, detailed in the 2019 Bureau of Reclamation Biological Assessment (BA) of the Coordinated Long-term Operation of the Central Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project (SWP), rely on juvenile salmonid monitoring data at Knights Landing to provide an early warning of increased emigration rates of listed salmonids out of the upper Sacramento River. The real-time data provided by the program allow for data related triggers in the operation of the Delta Cross Channel gates. Daily catch data are reported to the Salmon Monitoring Team (SaMT) and are posted on the publicly accessible CalFish website for interested parties. SaMT uses catch data to advise NMFS, through the Water Operations Management Team (WOMT), of entrainment risk in CVP/SWP export facilities, the estimated proportion of juvenile salmonid populations that have entered the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the data driven management triggers detailed in section 4.10.5.3 of the BA; from Oct 1 to Nov 30, if the Knights Landing Catch Index (KLCI) is greater than 3 fish.
Project Objectives
The National Wetland Condition Assessment (NWCA) is a statistical survey that begins to address some of the gaps in our understanding of wetland health by providing information on the ecological condition of the nation's wetlands and stressors most commonly associated with poor condition. The NWCA is designed to answer basic questions about the extent to which our nation's wetlands support healthy ecological conditions and the prevalence of key stressors at the national and regional scale. It is intended to complement and build upon the achievements of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wetland Status and Trends Program, which characterizes changes in wetland acreage across the conterminous United States. Paired together, these two efforts provide government agencies, wetland scientists, and the public with comparable, scientifically defensible information documenting the current status and, ultimately, trends in both wetland quantity (i.e., area) and quality (i.e., ecological condition).
The Environmental Monitoring Program (EMP) began in 1975 to conduct baseline and compliance monitoring of water quality, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and benthic invertebrates in the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary. This monitoring program was designed to track the impact of water diversions to the State Water Project (SWP) and Central Valley Project (CVP) on the Bay-Delta. In the decades since, EMP scientists have monitored these constituents at fixed and floating stations throughout the estuary and ensured compliance with state and federal mandates such as Water Right Decision 1641 (D-1641). In the years and decades since its inception, EMP has become one of the cornerstones for scientists' and managers' understanding of the pace and pattern of change in this critical ecosystem. By sampling water quality and biological communities concurrently, EMP has created a dataset that is uniquely useful in better understanding causal connections between physical, biological, and biogeochemical processes.
