Location
UMass Amherst
Event Website
http://fishpassage.ecs.umass.edu/Conference2012/
Start Date
5-6-2012 2:30 PM
End Date
5-6-2012 3:00 PM
Description
Traditionally, fish passage engineers, restoration practitioners, and environmental managers have focused assessments of alternatives and benefits at a single site. Effective restoration of populations in many fragmented systems, strategic allocation of resources, and prioritized sequencing of passage and related restoration efforts often demand larger scale tools that recognize benefit dependencies among actions at multiple sites and that effectively compare alternatives that target multiple species, age classes, bi-directional movements, and even non-passage goals. This presentation discusses one such approach that was developed in a rapid time frame with a diverse technical and stakeholder group to assess fish passage alternatives at 17 barriers in the Truckee River in Nevada for a guild of native species. Currently, we are developing a more flexible and powerful generic model borrowing from landscape ecology techniques and utilizing graph-theoretic algorithms to assess system-wide connectivity for fish passage problems, compare alternatives, and predict benefits. The case study is meant to demonstrate the potential value of watershed-scale analytical tools, solicit input on alternative techniques, and identify strengths and weaknesses in efforts to restore connectivity at sub-basin or basin scales.
Session B2 - Assessing fish passage connectivity at the watershed scale: Truckee River case study
UMass Amherst
Traditionally, fish passage engineers, restoration practitioners, and environmental managers have focused assessments of alternatives and benefits at a single site. Effective restoration of populations in many fragmented systems, strategic allocation of resources, and prioritized sequencing of passage and related restoration efforts often demand larger scale tools that recognize benefit dependencies among actions at multiple sites and that effectively compare alternatives that target multiple species, age classes, bi-directional movements, and even non-passage goals. This presentation discusses one such approach that was developed in a rapid time frame with a diverse technical and stakeholder group to assess fish passage alternatives at 17 barriers in the Truckee River in Nevada for a guild of native species. Currently, we are developing a more flexible and powerful generic model borrowing from landscape ecology techniques and utilizing graph-theoretic algorithms to assess system-wide connectivity for fish passage problems, compare alternatives, and predict benefits. The case study is meant to demonstrate the potential value of watershed-scale analytical tools, solicit input on alternative techniques, and identify strengths and weaknesses in efforts to restore connectivity at sub-basin or basin scales.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/fishpassage_conference/2012/June5/33
Comments
Jock Conyngham is a Research Ecologist in the Environmental Laboratory of the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). His specialties include multi-scaled assessment, restoration, and monitoring of watersheds, streams and rivers, riparian zones, and aquatic populations. Jock has provided technical support for ecosystem restoration, fish passage projects, dam removals, and environmental benefits assessments across North America for thirty years. He received a Master of Forest Science and a Master of Philosophy in population ecology and anthropology from Yale University. Prior to joining ERDC in 2002, Jock was Director of Watershed Assessment and Geomorphic Restoration for the national office of Trout Unlimited. Among other committee memberships, he has sat on the AFS-BES working committee Emerging Technologies in Fish Passage since its inception.