Clackamas FIP Monitoring Biennium 2

This project continued the fish, habitat, and benthic monitoring for the Clackamas Population of the Lower Columbia River ESU for the Clackamas FIP. This grant funded the 2nd of 3 biennia for the Partnership’s effectiveness monitoring efforts. The project area includes the Clackamas River watershed and eastside Lower Willamette River tributaries between Abernethy Creek to the South and Johnson Creek to the North. Effectiveness monitoring took three forms: macroinvertebrate sampling, juvenile fish snorkeling, and aquatic habitat surveys at a subset of project and at appropriate control sites.

This monitoring project will help determine the effectiveness of a large number of instream habitat and passage restoration projects on one subpopulation of a single Evolutionary Significant Unit. Because the projects will be implemented over six years, this monitoring can provide key data for adaptively designing and implementing restoration projects.
We will be able to begin to answer questions like what site factors and restoration techniques result in the maximum improvement to benthic habitat and project area use by juvenile salmonids and how long do the benefits of restoration last and how long until we begin to detect these positive impacts?