Geology topics

John Beeman

Publications and source records attributed to John Beeman.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2012

Assessment of juvenile coho salmon movement and behavior in relation to rehabilitation efforts in the Trinity River, California, using PIT tags and radiotelemetry

Coho salmon ( Oncorhynchus kisutch ) of the Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast (SONCC) Evolutionarily Significant Unit (ESU) is federally listed as a threatened species. The Trinity River Restoration Program (TRRP) is rehabilitating the Trinity River to restore coho salmon (coho) and other salmonid populations. In order to evaluate the program’s actions, several studies of movements and behavior of coho in the Trinity River were conducted from 2006 to 2009, including snorkel surveys and mark-recapture techniques based on Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags, elastomer tags, and radio transmitters. Catch, recapture, and condition of natural sub-yearlings, along with site fidelity and emigration of hatchery-reared yearlings in rehabilitated and reference habitats, were studied. Location was important because coho were absent from the lower controlled and rehabilitated sites most of the time. However, rehabilitation did not have a significant effect on natural coho salmon at the site level. Apparent survival of radio-tagged, hatchery-reared yearling coho released downstream from Lewiston Dam was much lower in the first 10 km downstream from the release site than in other areas between Lewiston Dam and the Klamath River estuary. Estimated survival of yearling hatchery coho salmon per 100 km down to Blake’s Riffle was estimated at 64 % over the distance of the 239 km study area. Migration primarily occurred at night in the upper Trinity River; however, as yearlings moved through the lower Trinity River towards the Klamath River, estuary nocturnal migration became less. Apparent survival was generally lowest in areas upstream from the North Fork of the Trinity River.

California↗

USGS2012

Effects of Iron Gate Dam discharge and other factors on the survival and migration of juvenile coho salmon in the lower Klamath River, northern California, 2006-09

Current management of the Klamath River includes prescribed minimum discharges intended partly to increase survival of juvenile coho salmon during their seaward migration in the spring. To determine if fish survival was related to river discharge, we estimated apparent survival and migration rates of yearling coho salmon in the Klamath River downstream of Iron Gate Dam. The primary goals were to determine if discharge at Iron Gate Dam affected coho salmon survival and if results from hatchery fish could be used as a surrogate for the limited supply of wild fish. Fish from hatchery and wild origins that had been surgically implanted with radio transmitters were released into the Klamath River slightly downstream of Iron Gate Dam at river kilometer 309. Tagged fish were used to estimate apparent survival between, and passage rates at, a series of detection sites as far downstream as river kilometer 33. Conclusions were based primarily on data from hatchery fish, because wild fish were only available in 2 of the 4 years of study. Based on an information-theoretic approach, apparent survival of hatchery and wild fish was similar, despite differences in passage rates and timing, and was lowest in the 54 kilometer (km) reach between release and the Scott River. Models representing the hypothesis that a short-term tagging- or handling-related mortality occurred following release were moderately supported by data from wild fish and weakly supported by data from hatchery fish. Estimates of apparent survival of hatchery fish through the 276 km study area ranged from 0.412 (standard error [SE] 0.048) to 0.648 (SE 0.070), depending on the year, and represented an average of 0.790 per 100 km traveled. Estimates of apparent survival of wild fish through the study area were 0.645 (SE 0.058) in 2006 and 0.630 (SE 0.059) in 2009 and were nearly identical to the results from hatchery fish released on the same dates. The data and models examined supported positive effects of water temperature, river discharge, and fish weight as factors affecting apparent survival in the Klamath River upstream of the confluence with the Shasta River, but few of the variables examined were supported as factors affecting survival farther downstream. The effect of water temperature on apparent survival upstream of the Shasta River was greater than Iron Gate Dam discharge, which was greater than fish weight. The estimated effect on apparent survival between release and the Shasta River with each 1degree Celsius increase in water temperature was 1.4 times the effect of a 100 cubic feet per second increase in Iron Gate Dam discharge and 2.5 times the effect of a 1 gram increase in fish weight, and the effects of discharge and weight diminished at higher water temperatures up to the 17.91 degrees Celsius maximum present in the data examined. The rate of passage at the detection site near the confluence with the Shasta River was primarily affected by date of release, and water temperature was the only factor supported at the site near the confluence with the Scott River. Passage rates at sites downstream of the Scott River were affected by several of the variables examined, but the estimated effects were small and often imprecise. Results from this study indicate that discharge at Iron Gate Dam has a positive effect on apparent survival of yearling coho salmon in the Klamath River upstream of the Shasta River, but the effects are smaller than those of water temperature and are mediated by it. The results also support the use of hatchery fish as surrogates for wild fish in studies of apparent survival, but the available evidence suggests that study fish should be released well upstream of the area of interest, due to short-term differences in survival and migration behavior of hatchery and wild fish after release.

California↗

USGS2011

Analyses of potential factors affecting survival of juvenile salmonids volitionally passing through turbines at McNary and John Day Dams, Columbia River

This report describes analyses of data from radio- or acoustic-tagged juvenile salmonids passing through hydro-dam turbines to determine factors affecting fish survival. The data were collected during a series of studies designed to estimate passage and survival probabilities at McNary (2002-09) and John Day (2002-03) Dams on the Columbia River during controlled experiments of structures or operations at spillways. Relatively few tagged fish passed turbines in any single study, but sample sizes generally were adequate for our analyses when data were combined from studies using common methods over a series of years. We used information-theoretic methods to evaluate biological, operational, and group covariates by creating models fitting linear (all covariates) or curvilinear (operational covariates only) functions to the data. Biological covariates included tag burden, weight, and water temperature; operational covariates included spill percentage, total discharge, hydraulic head, and turbine unit discharge; and group covariates included year, treatment, and photoperiod. Several interactions between the variables also were considered. Support of covariates by the data was assessed by comparing the Akaike Information Criterion of competing models. The analyses were conducted because there was a lack of information about factors affecting survival of fish passing turbines volitionally and the data were available from past studies. The depth of acclimation, tag size relative to fish size (tag burden), turbine unit discharge, and area of entry into the turbine intake have been shown to affect turbine passage survival of juvenile salmonids in other studies. This study indicates that turbine passage survival of the study fish was primarily affected by biological covariates rather than operational covariates. A negative effect of tag burden was strongly supported in data from yearling Chinook salmon at John Day and McNary dams, but not for subyearling Chinook salmon or juvenile steelhead. The negative effect of tag burden in data we examined from yearling Chinook salmon supports the recent findings from laboratory studies of barotrauma effects. A curvilinear (quadratic) effect of turbine unit discharge was weakly supported in data from subyearling Chinook salmon at John Day Dam. The maximum survival from those data was estimated to occur at a discharge of 15.9 thousand cubic feet per second, but the estimate was imprecise (95 percent confidence interval of -1.7-33.7 thousand cubic feet per second). This estimate is within the range of 1 percent of peak turbine operating efficiency (12.0-21.6 thousand cubic feet per second), but is lower than the 17.2 thousand cubic feet per second discharge at peak operating efficiency (at a head of 102 feet near the median in the data we examined). Effects of water temperature were supported in four of the five examined data sets and were strongly supported in all but one. Spill percentage, head, and total discharge received weak or moderate support in some cases. The results are consistent with those of several controlled field experiments of turbine discharge. Studies based on the Hi-Z Turb'N tag (balloon tag) often show small, generally statistically insignificant, differences in survival at different turbine discharge levels. Some studies also show that a quadratic equation can be well fit to the relation of survival and turbine unit discharge. The lack of support for the operational covariates in most of the data sets we examined may be due to the small effect turbine discharge has even in controlled studies, the observational nature of the data we used, and the evaluation method. We assessed support of the data for models of linear and quadratic effects, whereas controlled experiments often statistically compare the point estimates of survival from each operational treatment studied. The results of our analyses suggest tag burden should be minimized or controlled for in analyses of future stu

Oregon;Washington↗