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Do Impassable Dams and Flow Regulation Constrain the Distribution

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Do Impassable Dams and Flow Regulation Constrain the Distribution Journal of Applied Ichthyology J. Appl. Ichthyol. 25 (Suppl. 2) (2009), 39–47 Received: December 1, 2008 No claim to original US government works Accepted: February 21, 2009 Journal compilation Ó 2009 Blackwell Verlag GmbH doi: 10.1111/j.1439-0426.2009.01297.x ISSN 0175–8659 Do impassable dams andflow regulation constrain the distribution of green sturgeon in the Sacramento River, California? By E. A. Mora1, S. T. Lindley2, D. L. Erickson3 and A. P. Klimley4 1 Joint Institute for Marine Observations, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA; 2Southwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, Santa Cruz, CA, USA; 3Pew Institute for Ocean Science, Rosenstiel School ofmarine and Atmospheric Science, University ofMiami, Miami, FL, USA; 4Department ofWildlife, Fish, & Conservation Biology, University ofCalifornia, Davis, CA, USA Summary 2006), green sturgeon are ofconservation concern. The species Conservation of the threatened green sturgeon Acipenser as a whole is covered by the Convention on International medirostris in the Sacramento River of California is impeded Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora by lack of information on its historical distribution and an (CITES; Raymakers and Hoover, 2002) and is categorized as understanding of how impassable dams and altered hydro- Near Threatened by the IUCN (St. Pierre and Campbell, graphs are influencing its distribution. The habitat preferences 2006). The northern distinct population segment (NDPS) that ofgreen sturgeon are characterized in terms ofriver discharge, spawns in the Rogue and Klamath rivers is considered a velocity, channel gradient, and air temperature associated with Species of Concern by the US National Marine Fisheries 2590 sightings of green sturgeon in the Klamath and Rogue Service, and the southern distinct population segment (SDPS) rivers using the Mahalanobis distance D2, a multivariate of green sturgeon that spawns in the Sacramento River is measure of distance from the mean habitat conditions asso- listed as a threatened species under the US Endangered Species ciated with the sightings. D2 was then calculated for reaches of Act. the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries To be effective, restoration plans need to be based on a solid under historic and current (2007) hydrographs to assess where understanding of how the ecosystem functioned prior to and when habitat conditions in the Sacramento–San Joaquin anthropogenic alterations (Harwell et al., 1996); basic to this is basin are similar to those known to support green sturgeon. an understanding of the distribution of organisms within the The model for current habitat conditions was validated with ecosystem and the factors that control their distribution. The observations of acoustically-tagged green sturgeon at large in historical distribution ofgreen sturgeon in the Sacramento-San the basin in 2007. The model predicts that in the absence of Joaquin is poorly documented, but Adams et al. (2007) impassable dams and altered hydrographs, green sturgeon summarizes information that suggests that they may have would utilize the mainstem Sacramento and San Joaquin been distributed above the locations of present-day dams on rivers, and several major tributaries including portions of the the Sacramento and Feather rivers. Information on the lower Feather River, American River, and Yuba River. While historical or current distribution of green sturgeon in the San dams block access to about 9% of historically available Joaquin River and its tributaries is entirely lacking. It is known habitat, it is likely that the blocked areas contained relatively that mature green sturgeon enter rivers in late winter to late high amounts of spawning habitat because of their upstream spring and migrate inland to spawning sites (Erickson and position in the river network. Flow regulation below the Webb, 2007; Heublein et al., 2009). After spawning, A. med- reservoirs has mixed effects on habitat suitability for green irostris may leave the river or, more commonly, spend the sturgeon, with many reaches showing increased suitability in summer and autumn in deep pools before departing the river winter and spring, but with some reaches showing decreased with the onset of winter rains (Erikson et al., 2002; Heublein suitability in many months, particularly late spring through et al., 2009). early autumn. Overall, it appears that the main effect of ForSacramentoRivergreensturgeon,damsarehypothesized construction of large water-storage reservoirs in the Sacra- to be a major factor in their decline (Adams et al., 2007). The mento–San Joaquin river basin has been to curtail the Sacramento-SanJoaquinriverbasinhasbeenheavilydeveloped distribution of green sturgeon within this basin. for water storage and conveyance, and all but the smallest tributaries have impassable dams at fairly low elevations. These dams may have reduced the amount and altered the spatial Introduction distribution ofspawning, rearing and holding habitat available The Sacramento–San Joaquin river basin is currently the and by restriction to the mainstem Sacramento River, making subject of several large-scale ecosystem restoration programs A. medirostris more vulnerable to environmental catastrophes. that aim to recover anadromousfish populations, including the The main purpose of most of these dams is to store water North American green sturgeon Acipenser medirostris. The collected during the winter rainy and spring snow-melt seasons green sturgeon is known to spawn in only three rivers: the for use in the dry summer and autumn. Dams therefore alter Rogue River in southern Oregon and the Klamath and stream hydrographs in ways that may alter the suitability of Sacramento rivers in northern California. Like most sturgeons downstream reaches for various green sturgeon life stages. worldwide (Pikitch et al., 2005; Rosenthal and Pourkazemi, At present,flow requirements of salmonids factor into the 40 E. A. Mora et al. determination offlow regimes, but the requirements of green acoustically-tagged green sturgeon in the Sacramento River in sturgeon are not considered. 2007 to the cdfofD2 from the sightings from the Klamath and Habitat modeling offers one way to better understand the Rogue rivers. distribution of animals. The basic idea is to link easily- measured habitat attributes to observations of presence (and absence, under some approaches) with some sort of statistical Materials and methods model, and then use the model to predict the distribution of the animal from maps of the habitat attributes. Some Study area approaches, such as logistic regression, require both presence Sightings data were obtained from the Klamath River in and absence data, while others, such as bioclimatic envelopes northern California and from the Rogue River in southern and Mahalanobis distance D2, require only presence data Oregon. Habitat models based on these sightings data were (Manly et al., 2002). Johnson and Gillingham (2005) found applied to the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their Õ that methods based on presence-absence and presence-only tributaries in Californias Central Valley. Fig. 1 shows a map data had similar predictive accuracy, outperforming a of the study area. method based on expert opinion, and produced broadly similar maps of habitat suitability. Of the presence-only based methods, Farber and Kadmon (2003) argued that Sightings data Ô Õ Mahalanobis D2 was more accurate than envelope-based We used 2590 geo-referenced sightingevents (any method of methods because Mahalanobis D2 can capture the typically detecting the presence of a green sturgeon) to characterize the oblique rather than rectilinear nature of species niches and habitat preferences of the adults. These sighting events use all of the sightings data, rather than only the most generally occurred between March and December of 2000– extreme observations. Also, for rare species, presence-only 2005 in the Rogue, Klamath and Trinity rivers. Sighting events methods avoid the problem of interpreting absences– for rare were not selected to reflect a particular behavior (spawning, species, suitable habitat patches may be unoccupied when holding, migration, etc.), as this was generally not known, but surveyed. were used to define the range of environmental conditions In the Mahalanobis D2 approach, habitat suitability is known to support green sturgeon throughout a significant quantified as a distance from a multivariate mean that is portion of their freshwater range. estimated from habitat attributes associated with sightings of Sightings data come from gillnet captures, angling and the organism under study (Clark et al., 1993). An implicit telemetry relocations. Telemetry data were subsampled to assumption of this approach is that the mean of the habitat produce one sighting perfish per day. The Oregon Depart- attributes is equivalent to optimal habitat conditions, and ment of Fish and Wildlife and the Wildlife Conservation that habitats with a smaller distance from the mean are Society provided capture locations (gillnet sets and angling) more suitable than habitats with a larger distance. Any piece during the years 2000–2004 (n = 165) for the Rogue River. of habitat can be characterized by its distance from the The second group of Rogue River sightings was from capture mean, and if it is within some specified distance of the mean locations and relocations via radio and acoustic telemetry habitat conditions associated with presence of the organism studies conducted in 2000–2004, n
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