Effectiveness Monitoring Coordination and Assessment

With the listing of several West Coast salmon species as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), governors, numerous congressional and state legislators, and other leaders have sought to obtain funding to restore salmon populations and obtain economic relief for the region through recovery of species listed under the ESA. As a result, the fiscal investments made by state, federal, tribal and others involved in watershed health and salmon recovery are considerable. They range from small-scale habitat protection and restoration projects to large programs that manage land, water, or other resources within and across various jurisdictions and sectors. In nearly every case it is assumed that these programs and projects have the desired effect, but this assumption is rarely evaluated by project scale effectiveness monitoring, and even less so by complementary validation (cause-effect) monitoring.  This section specifically addresses the need to understand the effectiveness of watershed health and salmon recovery investments in terms of their stated outcomes and the resulting effect on salmon populations, water quality, water quantity, and habitat.

PNAMP has supported the development of a regional framework for determining which habitat projects are most effective. This has included habitat restoration project implementation monitoring, effectiveness monitoring, and the response of fish populations (validation monitoring) through intensively monitored watersheds.

Much of PNAMP’s focus has been on coordination related to Intensively Monitored Watersheds – learn more about that work here.

For more information about this project or specific past events related to this project, please contact us at gs-pnamp_contact@usgs.gov.