Coos Basin Monitoring Plan Development

In 2022, the Coos Basin Coho Partnership (CBCP) was selected for OWEBs Focus Investment Partnership (FIP) program. This project identified high priority watersheds within the Coos Watershed for restoration. The Strategic Action Plan developed by the Partnership identified these areas to be monitored to show restoration project success and effectiveness. This proposal funded the development of a monitoring plan for the projects implemented under this FIP. This plan outlines the monitoring questions, specific metrics to reported, monitoring protocols, who will do each type of monitoring, monitoring locations, types of analysis, and methods of reporting. Each monitoring cooperator will update their QA/QC document to reflect any new monitoring activities and send to DEQ for approval. Project partners are the FIP monitoring partners (Coos Watershed Association, Coos Soil and Water District, CTCLUSI, ODFW) and other cooperators/monitoring committees members (ODFW, NOAA, US Forest Service, BLM, OSU, DEQ, Wild Salmon Center, SSNERR, and Coquille Indian Tribe).

This project proposal leverages a strong foundation of local and regional results that addresses all four primary limiting factors for salmonids and steelhead: reduced amount and complexity of habitat, degraded water quality, blocked/impaired fish passage, and uncertainty that there is an adequate combination of voluntary and regulatory mechanisms to ensure success’ (NOAA 2016). Fundamental water quality variables in the Coos Estuary include temperature and salinity. Strong assumptions based on this project previous results (Mackereth 2016) and recent laboratory work (Emerman 2016, Fang 2018) suggests that restoring tidal connectivity for fish passage also improves key water quality attributes such as temperature and salinity gradients (Giannico and Souder 2005, 2018). Cumulative effects of restoration efforts to date still have not produced detectable signals of population level recovery (Roni et al 2002). To release the potential benefits of previous restoration and future efforts, complexity and connectivity must be mutually addressed and reestablished more fully in ways that interact and magnify habitat and migration advantages (Roni et al 2010, Flitcroft et al 2018). In the tidal zone this translates to restoring a combination of significant abundance and quality of off channel habitat that is accessible in both directions across tidal and seasonal water regimes. Results from developing monitoring protocols will inform expectations and reduce uncertainty of tidal restoration at social, scientific, regulatory, and economic levels. These protocols will frame expectations of benefits for ‘working landscapes’ and enlighten transparent application of optimized restoration resources. Successful and sustainable tidal stream restoration will be a shared responsibility between landowners, and multiple federal, state, and local agencies.