WRIA 8 Status and Trends Monitoring ( ) Hans B. Berge, Dan Lantz, Scott Stolnack, and Curtis DeGasperi King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks Roger Tabor and Kira Mazzi U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Purpose of Project Provide Status and Trends data and analysis to help understand the effectiveness of the WRIA 8 Salmon Recovery Plan Evaluate assumptions related to hydrology, biology, and riparian conditions across a range of land cover and land use types Evaluate methods and develop metrics to be used to assess the health of streams across Puget Sound

Partners Washington Department of Ecology Region 10 EPA Sentinel Sites Project US Fish and Wildlife Service WRIA 8 Salmon Recovery Council and Jurisdictions

Timeline and Budget $995,716 awarded from EPA in 2010 $335,934 match (WRIA 8 and King County) Year Major Task Project ManagementXXXXX Sampling Plan PreparationXX Field SamplingXXXXX Analysis XXX Outreach XXX Deliverables X

Approach 50 sites in WRIA 8 (random) 10 sites across Puget Sound (sentinel) Measure: –Flow –Land Use/Land Cover –Biological Indicators –Aquatic and Riparian Condition

Hypotheses H 1 : If effective impervious cover influences hydrology, then urbanized streams with impervious cover connected to streams will experience higher peak flows than systems with less connected impervious area. H 2 : If hydrology influences biological conditions in streams, then the BIBI and FIBI metrics will be lower in streams that exhibit flashy flows caused by more connected impervious cover. H 3 : If land use type influences fluvial geomorphology, then the frequency of pools will be different in each land use type. H 4 : If the salmon recovery plan in WRIA 8 is successful, then the pool frequency will increase in basins where restoration actions are prescribed.

Methods Hydrology Geomorphology Biology Remote Sensing UGA

Fish Sampling Electrofishing Identification Lengths and Weights Hatchery vs. wild F-IBI (Matzen and Berge 2007)

Preliminary Results North Creek,

Habitat Sentinel Sites Good

B-IBI Excellent Good Fair Poor Very Poor Sentinel Sites

F-IBI Sentinel Sites Excellent Good Fair Poor

Stream flow A work in progress We have established 6 new gauges and have 30+ existing gauges co-located with sampling reaches We will be using established metrics to evaluate our hypotheses

Land use/Land cover Looking at changes in land cover over time (see 2011 report) Using land use classification to better describe how landcover influences salmon recovery and to understand basin scale conditions

Deliverables Final Report to EPA describing the relationship between stream flow, aquatic habitat, and biological integrity across land use types in WRIA 8 and 10 sites across Puget Sound Report on the status and trends of 50 stream reaches across WRIA 8

Summary Year 3 in a 5 year study Currently sampling 57 sites annually %pools is considered good for ~1/3 of our sites Tier 1 streams are in the “fair” and “good” categories Wide range in FIBI across watershed following pattern across Tiers similar to BIBI Flow Land cover change analysis shows losses in UGA.

Acknowledgements Funding support from EPA, WRIA 8, and King County Field Crews from King County and USFWS Jurisdictions for site access, especially Dwayne Paige and Kit Paulsen Ecology staff for database support Sentinel site team at EPA and Ecology