Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Session D3 - Fish Passage Monitoring, What’s really going on out there?

Brett Towler — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:25:00 PDT

Currently, research indicates an overall lack of monitoring on a broad scale for fish passage projects. Projects, in general, are completed and interested parties seem to move to the next project site, without investigating and validating the results of their previous efforts. Although fish passage restoration work continues to be carried out on-the-ground, how certain are we that each project has produced the expected results? Monitoring our work is crucial to ensuring we achieve our project goals and continue to expand the science and knowledge relating to fish passage. Fish passage work is ongoing around the country, much of which is, in part, funded through U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) programs like the National Fish Passage Program, the National Fish Habitat Partnership, or the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program. It is important to the long term success of federal programs such as these that monitoring be carried out, as it provides the opportunity for inspired success stories and accountability through the assessment of work completed. But how often is this done, and, when monitoring is completed, what form does it take? Working nationally with our counterparts in the Service, we present the quantitative and qualitative results of a survey intended to investigate the scale and scope of monitoring completed over the past three years through federal programs like those listed above. Example questions asked include: â€œwhat projects did your office/program engage in over the last 3 years,â€ â€œwhat types of restoration projects have you monitored by taking physical measurements and/or performing aquatic studies,â€ â€œwhen monitoring is performed, who is it performed by and how is the Service involved.â€ Each respondent was asked to answer several questions relating to specific projects and the level and types of monitoring performed over that period at his/her field station. Ultimately, these survey results will help us better understand monitoring as it is currently being done through Service-funded programs. This work is also intended to serve as a baseline or jumping off point in an effort to expand monitoring and utilize or improve the science in relation to fish passage barrier removal.

Session C3 - Channel Damage, Repair, and Recovery after Extreme Floods

James MacBroom — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:25:00 PDT

Extreme floods cause extensive damage to both natural systems and developed communities. A series of major floods in 2012 capped by Hurricane Irene resulted in severe upland erosion, landslides, channel incision and knick points, and mass bank failures along high energy streams, creating high sediment loads. Many low gradient and downstream rivers had severe bed aggradation, channel widening, avulsions, and floodplain deposition. Numerous road culverts and bridges were damaged, blocked, or destroyed. Aquatic habitat impacts include turbidity, substrate siltation, loss of pools, riffles and side channels, wide shallow flow, increased solar exposure, fish passage blocks, and loss of bank vegetation. Even though the preferred option is normally to allow natural processes to heal flood damaged channels, there are unavoidable situations where physical, social, or ecological conditions warrant active intervention.The first response phase after the flood saw rapid deployment of contractors and public works staff to repair roads, bridges, culverts and channels to protect infrastructure and public safety plus provide emergency services. Several regulatory programs temporarily revised, modified, or waived permits to enable rapid responses. River experts were assigned to assess streams, prioritize repairs, co-ordinate contractors and direct construction work based on rapid geomorphic assessments and field designs. Evaluations of historic and potential river processes were used to review channel sensitivity and ecological risk factors with the goal of adjusting critical reaches toward equilibrium conditions and to discourage further damage by excessive channelization, dredging, straightening and armoring. The initial verbal policies and instructions evolved into written emergency channel repair guidelines for use by technical staff, public works crews, contractors, and landowners. The guidelines provide basic recommendations to classify projects and set clear goals, and select methodologies for proposed channel types and dimensions, slope, alignment, and floodplain connectivity based upon use of analog reference sites and empirical regional hydraulic data, plus use of analytical techniques for sediment continuity by professional staff. The final step is to monitor both the repaired and unrepaired river reaches to observe and document their recovery to whether other action is necessary.

Session B3 - Road crossings limit nothern pike access to seasonal spawning habitat

Matthew Diebel — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:25:00 PDT

The Juvenile Salmon Acoustic Telemetry System (JSATS) is a nonproprietary technology developed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District, for detecting and tracking small fish. The JSATS consists of acoustic microtransmitters; autonomous, cabled, or portable receivers with hydrophones; and data management and processing applications. Each microtransmitter, surgically implanted in fish, transmits a unique 31-bit binary code encoded using binary phase shift keying at 416.7 kHz. Cabled systems are deployed at dams and used to determine passage-route and near-dam behavior for fish. Each cabled system is synchronized to a universal GPS clock and waveforms are saved to the computer before being decoded. Valid detections are separated from spurious detections using filtering processes requiring a minimum of six messages with a pulse interval matching that expected from properly functioning tags within a fixed period. Time-of-arrival information for valid detections on four hydrophones is used to solve for the 3D position of tagged fish. For the cabled system at John Day Dam, the range for 3D tracking is more than 100 m upstream of the dam face where hydrophones are deployed. Cabled systems have been successfully deployed on several major dams to acquire information for salmon protection and to develop more fish friendly hydroelectric facilities.

Session A3 - Neptun: the electronic guidance system that effectively manages fish movement in a down and upstream waterway.

Piotr Parasiewicz — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:25:00 PDT

The protection of fish communities at man-made facilities and barriers has a long history of significant expenditure of scientific and monetary resources. Beyond creating fishways, considerable investment is made to protect fish by blocking their access to turbines, water intakes, and directing them to less risky areas. Nevertheless, guiding fish to the fish passages, especially in downstream direction still present a big problem. The anticipated success of electrical fish barriers and guidance structures has been limited due to current design limitations. However, a device with a fundamentally new design feature has been successfully deployed in Poland. The device is called "NEPTUN". NEPTUN is an electric-electronic 3-phase barrier, producing a smooth non-uniform pulsed electric field of low voltage. It uses arrays of positive and negative electrodes and gradually increases the intensity of the electric field between the electrodes from positive to negative. Unlike other devices NEPTUN does not stun fish, but affects their neuromuscular system at the informational level, allowing them to escape from the area of the electric field. The basic field installation consists of steel electrodes attached to the river bottom so that they can move from the vertical to an angle of + / - 90 degrees. A buoy attached at the end of the electrode keeps it in an upright position. Groups of electrodes are powered by remotely controlled generators. Specialized software controls the parameters of the electric field, creates statistically-mastered changes, and controls the switching of each group of electrodes. The system supports sensors for monitoring temperature and conductivity of the water which can be used to automatically adjust the properties of the electric field. With an average power input of 0.43 to 0.45 kWh and electricity consumption of 0.0018 kW/m2, "NEPTUN" has a low operating cost. Additionally, the system maintenance is minimal.

Session D3 - Physical and biological assessment of the Eel River Headwaters restoration sites in Plymouth, MA

Ellen Douglas — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:05:00 PDT

The Eel River Headwaters Restoration Project (completed in August 2010) actively restored 40+ acres of commercial cranberry bogs into stream and wetland habitat. This study involved habitat, fish and macroinvertebrate assessments at 2 actively restored Eel River reaches, 2 passively restored cranberry bog reaches, and 2 reference reaches. Sampling occurred in September 2010 and June 2011 following standard protocols. Furthermore, at the 2 actively restored reaches, we compared 2 prior years of macroinvertebrate sample data to our post-restoration samples. For the post-restoration sampling, the cumulative percent of the variance explained for Principal Components Analysis (PCA) Axes 1 and 2 was 49.38%, 57.41%, and 36.14% for physical habitat, fish, and macroinvertebrates, respectively. In all 3 cases, our PCA results indicated spatial and temporal variability between reaches. Macroinvertebrate Family Biotic Index (FBI) of post restoration samples ranged from 3.83 to 8.12, indicating poor to excellent conditions. For 12 pairwise comparisons of macroinvertebrate data between pre-restoration and post-restoration communities, only 1 pair-wise comparison was significant (Mann-Whitney Rank Sum, p<0.05). Results show the initial separation of the active Eel River restoration from the passive restoration and reference.

Session C3 - A 10 Year Retrospective Look at the Current Condition and Success of Nature-Like Fishways Installed on Three Maryland Rivers

Kathy Hoverman — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:05:00 PDT

Over ten years ago the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) began the process of restoring anadromous fish runs targeting river herring on three highly urbanized rivers in the greater Washington DC area. This comprehensive effort, part of the environmental mitigation for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project, sought to mitigate 23 barriers with nature-like fishways. These fishways used riffle grade controls and flow constrictor / step pools and were the first of their kind in the mid-Atlantic. SHA conducted intensive monitoring on all 23 structures for 5 years. The monitoring included structure stability, habitat quality, and fish and benthic macroinvertebrate collection and identification. DC Fisheries has continued to monitor for fish and eggs in one of the rivers after the 5 year period resulting in 7 years of fish passage data. These data can be combined to assess the success of the nature-like fishways over a longer period of time than many others on the East Coast.

Session B3 - Survival improvements at Fish Guidance Systems designed to improve safe downstream passage of anadromous and catadromous fish

Theodore Willis — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:05:00 PDT

The range of river herring (A. pseudoharengus and A. aestivalis) is much smaller now than historical records represent during the pre-colonial and pre-industrial revolution phases of New England settlement. Many water control structures in New England are built on top of falls and other natural flow constrictions that were not impediments to river herring passage during antiquity, but are now, despite implementation of technical fish pass design criteria. There are locations in New England, especially in Maine, where river herring ascend falls and other natural features that appear to exceed accepted fish passage criteria. Upstream fish passage at a given site is dependent upon multiple factors, including swimming characteristics of target fish species/life stages and hydraulic conditions during seasonal migration periods. Technical fishpass design criteria are intended to provide for fishpass designs that are conservative in terms of maximum flow speeds, heights of hydraulic drops, and holding area turbulence as defined by an energy dissipation factor. Are there characteristics that allow for upstream fish passage that are not considered in the design criteria? Here we present specific examples of sites where adult river herring pass upstream over seemingly impassable features during seasonal spawning migrations. We identify characteristics of each site relevant to upstream fish passage and compare those natural barrier metrics to commonly used metrics for design of upstream fish passage systems. Our objective is to inform decision making and design implemented in watershed-scale fisheries restoration planning and the design of technical and â€œnature-likeâ€ fishpass systems.

Session A3 - Survival improvements at Fish Guidance Systems designed to improve safe downstream passage of anadromous and catadromous fish

Shane Scott — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:05:00 PDT

Many anadromous fish species, such as Pacific and Atlantic salmon (Onchorhynchus spp., Salmo salar), the shads and river herring (Alosa spp.), and catadromous species including the American eel (Anguilla rostrata), are in danger of extinction throughout some or all of their range. Impacts to these populations include entrainment at hydroelectric dams and other water conveyance facilities. State and federal laws now mandate protection of these and other fish populations. Facility operators must often implement physical or operational modifications to reduce fish entrainment. This presentation will document the improved juvenile fish passage survival results at several Fish Guidance System (FGS) installations in North America. The FGS has been demonstrated to successfully guide downstream migrating fish to safer bypass routes, thereby reducing entrainment and improving survival. Most fish species migrate downstream in the thalweg, taking advantage of higher water velocities. The FGS is designed to exploit this migratory behavior and guide fish to a safer point of egress. The FGS is composed of a series of floating panels anchored across the river channel. The design and configuration of the FGS varies at each site according to hydraulic conditions and species present. Acoustic telemetry and hydroacoustic studies conducted on various FGS installations indicate that from 53% to upwards of 92% of downstream migrating juvenile Pacific and Atlantic salmon were successfully guided to a safer bypass route in a variety of facility configurations and hydraulic conditions. Further research is needed, but the FGS should also provide significant survival benefits to other downstream migrating fish species that demonstrate similar migration behavior, including juvenile shad and herring (Alosa spp.), adult eels (A. rostrata) and kelts (O. mykiss, S. salar).

Session D3 - Fish Passage Restoration at the Briggsville Dam: Using Sediment Transport Analysis for Natural Channel Design

Ashley Ficke — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:45:00 PDT

Agricultural diversion structures on South Boulder Creek (SBC; Boulder County, Colorado) have impaired fish movement for nearly 100 years. Although several of these structures have been modified for fish passage, their efficiencies remain unmeasured. Upstream fish movements were compared across two SBC structures and a control site in a 1-yr study. The upstream, channel-spanning structure had a ~7% slope, the downstream partial channel-spanning structure had a ~3% slope, and the control site was located at a small, channel-wide boulder vane. Five species of fish (Oncorhynchus mykiss, Salmo trutta, Rhinichthys cataractae, Catostomus catostomus,and C. commersoni) were marked with PIT tags, and their movements were monitored with paired antenna arrays at each of the three sites. Of the 1153 tagged fish, 663 were subsequently detected at one or more of the antennae. Upstream movement was lowest between November and March at all sites. More fish moved across the control site (n = 66) than across the low-slope (n = 31) or high-slope (n = 26) structures. More movement occurred across the control site in August and from April through June, a pattern also seen at the high-slope structure; movement over the low-slope structure was most prevalent in September and October, with a smaller pulse in April and May. Modifications to these structures have restored connectivity to a 2-km segment of SBC, but upstream fish movement rates remain lower across the structures than at the control site. Differences in upstream passage rates are related to structural design differences between the two fishways.

Session C3 - Fish Passage Restoration at the Briggsville Dam: Using Sediment Transport Analysis for Natural Channel Design

Jessica Louisos — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:45:00 PDT

The removal of the Briggsville Dam reconnected over 30 miles of headwater streams along the North Branch of the Hoosic River. The removal of the dam restored local fish passage and improved local habitat for cold water river species including the eastern brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), longnose sucker (Catostomus catostomus), and slimy sculpin (Cottus cognatus). The project also reduced flood hazards associated with removal of a deteriorated dam that could fail and lead to flood hazards. A preliminary channel design specified many rock grade control structures to establish a suitable channel profile and protect a bridge with shallow footings located 750 feet upstream of the dam. Geomorphic assessment, steady state bridge scour modeling, and ultimately quasi-steady state sediment transport analysis predicted a suitable sediment equilibrium channel slope without fixing the bed in place. The analysis indicated that a naturally dynamic channel bed was possible, and this alternative was designed and constructed. A final design was implemented that removed the dam and accumulated coarse sediment upstream of the dam. A compound channel with vegetated flood benches and several stone riffles was constructed, and the existing armor on the bridge abutments was reinforced. Instream habitat features such as root wads and large boulders were placed in the channel bed to seed the channel prior to larger channel forming flows that would provide natural habitat features. Channel bed elevations were measured at the bridge pre-construction, weekly during construction, and post-construction after floods including Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011. Bed elevations following the flooding were similar to model predictions, yet the channel width increased. This case study shows that understanding of sediment transport regimes in a river can guide an appropriate design and in some cases greatly reduce construction costs.