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PSNERP-Nearshore Science Team (NST)
Monthly Meeting Synthesis
10-11 August 2005

Attendance

Si Simenstad (UW), Curtis Tanner (USFWS), Fred Goetz (ACOE), Tom Mumford (WA-DNR), Hugh Shipman (DOE), Bernie Hargraves (ACOE), Tom Leschine (UW), Kurt Fresh (NOAA Fisheries), Megan Dethier (UW FHL), Phebe Drinker (UW)
Visitors: Greg Williams (Battelle MSL), Sandy Wyllie Echeverria (UW)

Primary Meeting Topics

1. continued discussion of Feasibility Report intent and structure
2. ‘benefit determination’ as general component of Feasibility Report and in broader PSNERP (restoration) context
3. Science Morning: Eelgrass autecology and restoration
4. management measures and research questions (status, continuing)

Science Synthesis (Science Morning): Tom Mumford, Sandy Wyllie-Echeverria and Greg Williams

1. Introduction, distribution, autecology and status (Mumford)

  • Predominantly Zostera marina (eelgrass), but also non-indigenous Z. japonica in northern Puget Sound (less so central PS, no southern PS) and Hood Canal; surfgrasses, Phyllospadix scouleri in San Juan Islands, P. serulatus, P. torreyi
  • No eelgrass south of Anderson Island; reflects increasing tidal range; could be several subspecies/varieties
  • 37% of 3067 miles of Washington shoreline has eelgrass, but Padilla Bay and Samish Bay comprise 1/3 of eelgrass in State
  • Mycorrhizal associations may be important (Rusty Rodriguez, USGS)
  • Major food web role, but primarily through detritus production, rather than direct consumption (albeit, by waterfowl such as black brant); 1.5 billion kg detritus exported from Puget Sound
  • DNR eelgrass monitoring program (recent 2005 update):
    • Rotating design; only 2-4 core sites per region per years
    • sites of very strong evidence of decline throughout the Sound; biggest decrease in Hood Canal at northern end of northeastern shore
    • notable areas of significant decline in shallow embayments of San Juan Islands, e.g. Westcott Bay—something is causing loss that needs to be addressed first
    • Wasting disease or other disease occurring?
    • What about water quality? Considered to be a potential cause in Westcott Bay
    • PSNERP: why be absorbed in restoration techniques when causes of loss still aren’t identified? (i.e. restored sites may be lost if stressors aren’t dealt with)
    • Look at areas of increased beds – what can we learn there?

§ i.e. Padilla Bay—not representative; no significant eelgrass existed prior to historic diking and disconnection from Skagit Delta distributary channels

§ San Francicso Bay has more beds on hydraulic mining-produced sandbars than on nearshore

2. Restoration (Sandy Wyllie-Echeverria and Greg Williams)

  • Typical restoration has involved transplanting (either directly or after stockpiling plants) shoots, roots and rhizomes; seed distribution now of interest; issues:
    • Determining what month seeding occurs – to know when to collect seeds
    • Information on rates of self-abortion, flower developing
    • Frequency of flowering shoots
    • How many seeds are dispersing in environment – how do we measure that? Seed collectors? (Hasn’t been studied?)
  • Many lessons from intensive monitoring, such as (BML, UW) at Clinton Ferry Terminal mitigation (albeit rare level of monitoring science!)
    • Major redesign to remove disturbance effects (e.g., ferry prop-wash scouring and turbidity)
    • Plants stockpiled and then transplanted in areas absent eelgrass (disturbance sites): “spotty success” although total number of mitigates shoots estimated to exceed loss
    • Issues raised:

§ Questions of success of project—How might project have been better structured (in terms of criteria for determining success/failure)? E.g., What can PSNERP learn from this example? How?

§ If entire study treated as meta-analysis rather than reference sites, wouldn’t they have reached different conclusions?

§ Would it have been useful to have more baseline environmental data, since we removed disturbances on controlling factors in Thom’s conceptual model? How was turbidity affecting light prior to disturbance removal? Did it get “better” once disturbance was removed?

Benefits Determination (Fred Goetz and Tom Leschine)

  • Formal USACE justification for project, provided at end of PSNERP Stage 2 questions, post delivery of Strategic Needs Assessment: Is there sufficient uncertainty to warrant continued study? What to study? Is there need for Demo/Early Action projects for interim feasibility and construction authority Sufficient change between desired level of restoration and existing capacities to warrant construction in general?
  • Three levels of thinking about restoration in PSNERP: (a) benefits not explicitly addressed; (b) benefits tied to project’s ecological rationales (macro); and, (c) vbnefits tied to community rationales (macro & micro).
  • Definition of benefit: Has to matter to a person (a human valuation), not for the benefit of ecology; but, depending on how you frame the problem/benefit, one man’s benefit may be another woman’s cost
  • Valuation: (1) classic cost: benefit; (2) non-market; or (3) “ecological services” that translate into human values; Restored Processes à Recovered Functions à Recovered Structures à Recovered Commodities = ecological services
  • Human dimensions of importance: equity, cultural heritage, and social capital; efficiency an issue? Good restoration is cost effective, has verifiable and credible results, has good scientific results and is related to something important to people

Status and Action Items

Research Questions

  • Kurt Fresh will clean up research questions as they exist, add some preamble language, and send out to all NST members to review; we will continue to make them major focus of NST meetings, and determine how to prioritize questions; we need to make a list of research questions that is updatable, malleable, and somehow intersect our continuously compiling list (by Elaine Kleckner) with our need for research

Management Measures

  • Next steps involve formalization of list, description/definition of management measures and “official” summaries that will be useful as documentation in the program that management measures have been reviewed and examined; additionally (Simenstad recommendation), white papers could be drafted to provide linkage between management measures, research questions, and nearshore ecosystem Processes; belong primarily with Implementation Team (Tanner); I-Team meeting following Friday

Change Analysis

  • Change Analysis Working Group converging on strategy and analytical process for change analysis; greatest hurdle has been how to take advantage of contemporary data to hindcast change in shoreline form (structure) and processes; next meeting Sept. 27