Appendix A: CALFED Science Fellows 2008 Priority Topic Areas and Research Questions

The Science Program is seeking research projects in 4 broad topic areas:

  1. Trends and Patterns of Habitats, Populations and System Response to a Changing Environment
  2. Aquatic Invasive (Exotic) Species
  3. Water Supply, Water Quality
  4. Developing Indicators and Performance Measures

Topic 1: Trends and Patterns of Habitats, Populations and System Response to a Changing Environment

Need: Drivers of change (climate change, subsidence, human population growth and other factors) mean that future conditions and circumstances in the Delta will be different than they are today.  The Delta Regional Ecosystem Restoration Implementation Plan (DRERIP [http://www.science.calwater.ca.gov/drerip/drerip_index.html]) has developed conceptual models and other tools that attempt to capture the dynamics of Delta species and their habitats under current circumstances.  Research is needed to explore how the species and their habitats will respond to future conditions.  The intent is to enhance existing resource management or develop new tools and decision support systems that improve management effectiveness.  Important considerations in research design include responses of primary production, habitat quality and connectivity, ecosystem function and ecosystem services.  Connectivity should extend beyond the Delta to include any critical events in the watersheds or the Pacific Ocean that impact Delta systems.  Any model developed should have a spatial component and projects should incorporate a landscape perspective where appropriate.  Projects that can be fit within a framework of ecological economics are particularly desired. 

Questions to be addressed by the research:

  • What are the driver/response relationships affecting critical habitats for at-risk species and ecosystem functions? How are these relationships best described (e.g., continuous, stepwise, linear, nonlinear)?
  • How will one or more of human population growth, invasive species, climate change, sea-level rise, subsidence, and levee failure affect the extent and quality of habitats critical for at-risk species?  How can management respond to these factors in ways that are robust to additional change?
  • What are the implications of future scenarios of change for management strategies and tactics?  What new opportunities to enhance habitat or ecosystem function may emerge from future change?

Additional specific questions

  1. What effects do changing ocean conditions have on the ecology of the San Francisco Estuary? Contact person(s): Ted Sommer (DWR) tsommer@water.ca.gov
  2. Why has there been a major long-term decline in longfin smelt relative abundance in the San Francisco Estuary? Contact person(s): Ted Sommer (DWR) tsommer@water.ca.gov
  3. The Science Program is currently funding researchers to develop quantitative life cycle and population dynamic models for chinook salmon and Delta smelt. Can similar models be developed for other POD species: striped bass, longfin smelt, and threadfin shad? Contact person(s): Ted Sommer (DWR) tsommer@water.ca.gov
  4. What is the role of ocean-estuary coupling on fishes that utilize both the estuary and the coastal ocean? Contact person(s): Ted Sommer (DWR) tsommer@water.ca.gov
  5. To what degree would tidal wetland restoration benefit pelagic fishes?  Are there ways to estimate how much marsh area is needed to significantly “seed” adjacent open-water environments? Contact person(s): Ted Sommer (DWR) tsommer@water.ca.gov, or Matt Nobriga (Science Program) Matthew.Nobriga@calwater.ca.gov
  6. For species of concern (steelhead, winter and spring run salmon, green sturgeon, Delta smelt, and longfin smelt), what effects does climate change have on:
    1. Supporting food webs and bioenergetics;
    2. habitat suitability;
    3. timing and availability of water for the environment;
    4. water quality (i.e. the spatial distribution of salinity);
    5. aquatic organism distribution & composition (native vs. invasive, prey vs. predator), and fish migration (i.e., timing, location/route, potential barriers, entrainment)?

Topic 2: Aquatic Invasive (Exotic) Species

Need:  Aquatic invasive species have an impact on at-risk species, water quality, and Delta ecosystems that can severely limit current and future management options including the constraint of water operations.  There is a need to develop models that could a) predict the response of entrenched invaders, at-risk species, and ecosystems to future management regimes or scenarios in the context of a changing environment (e.g., climate change, land-use change, catastrophic events, etc.), and b) be used to predict successful establishment of invaders under likely future scenarios including different water-management regimes, climate change, land use change, catastrophic events, etc.  

Questions to be addressed by the research:

  • What are the key factors allowing successful establishment and spread of invasive species?  What are the trends in these key factors?  Are they manageable?
  • What ecological constraints do current species assemblages place on at-risk aquatic species?
  • How might climate change, sea-level rise and likely future invasive species (e.g., Dreissena spp.) change the ecology of the Bay-Delta?
  • Are there practical and effective options for preventing new invasions, eradicating existing invaders, and managing entrenched invaders to benefit at- risk species?

Additional specific questions

  1. Does nutrient pollution contribute to the success of non-native organisms in the upper San Francisco Estuary?  If so, what are the mechanisms that lead to invasive species success? Contact person(s): Anke Mueller-Solger (DWR) amueller@water.ca.gov or Lisa Lucas (USGS) llucas@usgs.gov
  2. How do zooplankton and fish biomass levels in the upper San Francisco Estuary compare to other temperate zone estuaries? Contact person(s): Ted Sommer (DWR) tsommer@water.ca.gov, or Anke Mueller-Solger (DWR) amueller@water.ca.gov, or Larry Brown (USGS) lrbrown@usgs.gov

Established and likely future invasives of particular concern are:

  • Dreissena spp. (Quagga and Zebra mussels)
  • Microcystis aeruginosa blooms
  • Egeria densa (Common waterweed)
  • Corbula amurensis (Overbite clam)
  • Corbicula fluminea (Asian clam)
  • Esox lucius (Northern Pike)
  • Limnoithona tetraspina (copepod)

Topic 3: Water Supply, Water Quality

Need:  To effectively design and manage water projects in the Delta to allocate water to meet public and environmental water-quality needs.

Questions to be addressed by the research:

  • What are the “public health” risks (including economic costs) associated with current through-Delta conveyance of water for potable purposes, and the relative “public health” risks (and related costs) of alternative conveyance approaches?
  • What are the “ecosystem” risks (including economic costs) associated with current through-Delta conveyance of water for potable purposes, and the relative “ecosystem” risks (and related costs) of alternative conveyance approaches?
  • How are aquatic contaminants impairing the recovery of at-risk aquatic species?

Additional specific questions

  1. How do hydrodynamic and water quality combinations influence the entrainment of San Joaquin basin salmonids? What study designs and analytical approaches are most suitable to assess the relationships between survival and migratory pathways for San Joaquin salmonids; in particular, what studies can be designed to quantify water routing effects on San Joaquin basin salmonids? Contact person(s): Pat Brandes (USFWS) <Pat_Brandes@fws.gov>
  2. What do historical, coded, wire-tag recoveries of Central Valley salmon in ocean fisheries tell us about ocean distribution? How can variability in ocean distribution patterns be related to oceanographic conditions? Contact person(s): Ken Newman (USFWS) <Ken_Newman@fws.gov>
  3. What are the costs and benefits of acoustic tags relative to coded wire tags for estimating juvenile chinook salmon survival in the Delta and to modeling survival as a function of environmental variables? Contact person(s): Ken Newman (USFWS) <Ken_Newman@fws.gov>
  4. Can nonlethal technologies be used to efficiently monitor outmigrating juvenile salmonids and other estuarine fishes? Contact person(s): Ted Sommer (DWR) <tsommer@water.ca.gov>
  5. What factors influence the upstream migration of native (e.g., chinook salmon, sturgeon, Delta smelt) and non-native fishes (e.g. striped bass, American shad) through the complex channels of the Delta? Contact person(s): Ted Sommer (DWR) <tsommer@water.ca.gov>
  6. How will the availability of environmental water supplies be affected by climate change? Contact person(s): John Andrew (DWR) <jandrew@water.ca.gov>
  7. How will climate change affect levee integrity, reservoir operations, pulse flows, salinity and aquatic species composition (native vs. nonnative) in the coastal ocean, San Francisco Bay-Delta, and the Sacramento and San Joaquin river watersheds? Contact person(s): John Andrew (DWR) <jandrew@water.ca.gov>

Topic 4: Developing Indicators and Performance Measures

Need: The CALFED 10-Year Action Plan commits CALFED to initiate performance-based program management and strengthen its fiscal management and tracking.  Identifying indicators and performance measures and executing the necessary data collection and processing are key components of performance-based management. 
There are many questions and issues that emerge in relation to the development and use of performance measures. The questions below are intended to provide general guidelines for study proposals:

How do we best relate management actions to performance outcomes?

  1. What are the most appropriate methods to aggregate a wide range of metrics to provide an overall picture of the Delta ecosystem’s status?
  2. How do we embed performance measures within an adaptive management framework to promote a powerful learning process?
  3. What is the best approach to using performance measures in reporting to the general public? To the scientific community?

Contact person(s) (except where noted otherwise): Elizabeth Soderstrom (CALFED Science Program) esoderstrom@calwater.ca.gov

The CALFED Ecosystem Restoration Program (ERP) has developed performance measures to gauge progress towards ERP goals and objectives. However, careful analysis of data relative to these performance measures is critical for data-driven decision-making and to most efficiently target future monitoring needs. Below are several guiding questions for study proposals relative to ERP’s performance measures effort:

  1. What are the most appropriate statistical methods for analyzing data relative to ERP Performance Measures?
  2. What are the best approaches to economize the sampling needed to quantify spatial heterogeneity for different indicators?
  3. What are the most appropriate methods to transform existing monitoring data into information that can be used to measure performance?
  4. How should fish sampling and monitoring programs be designed for spatially clustered fish populations? How should the resulting data be analyzed to estimate abundances? Contact person(s): Ken Newman (USFWS) <Ken_Newman@fws.gov>