Page 19 - 2015 Annual Project Review

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA REGIONAL GOAL
Leverage floodplain science and messaging to influence policy that expedites on-the-ground infrastructural improvements to promote robust fisheries and self-sustaining populations of wild salmonids in the Central Valley by allowing fish to access and benefit from functioning floodplains.
KEYSTONE INITIATIVE
Central Valley Fish and Floodplains
Salmon Habitat on Rice Fields – A Model for Ag, Flood Protection, and Fish.
The Central Valley Managed Agricultural Habitat Investigation is addressing the 21st century’s defining environmental challenge: reconciling ecosystem function with human needs in the face of a changing climate. Operating at the nexus of water supply, flood protection, agriculture, and fish and wildlife conservation, the project is laying the scientific and political groundwork for precedent-setting water solutions with multiple benefits for both
fish and people. Begun on the Knaggs Ranch in Yolo Bypass in 2012, the project now encompasses seven distinct floodplain research sites throughout the Central Valley.
Replicating our research across multiple Central Valley floodplain locations indicates that the benefits of floodplains are the result of the simple process of shallow floodplain inundation (spreading and slowing floodwaters under the midwinter sun) and are therefore not confined to any single location or water source. Just as agricultural crop plants convert sunlight and soil nutrients into food for people, fish food is created as sunlight falls on the water and phytoplankton floating near the water’s surface use photosynthesis to convert sunlight into sugars. The simple act of sunlight falling on water is the foundation of the river food web; sunlight makes algae, algae makes bugs, bugs make fish. When floodwaters spread out across the floodplain, a lot more sunlight hits the water than when rivers are confined between levees allowing inundated winter floodplains to function as the “solar panels” that power aquatic food webs in low gradient river systems.
The simple floodplain food web (algae-bugs-fish) – created as floodwater slowed down and spread across the floodplains – was the engine of productivity that supported prolific numbers of fish and waterfowl in the prehistoric Central Valley (think fish to fill the rivers and ducks to blacken the sky). Recovery of endangered fish populations to self-sustaining levels is likely impossible without first recovering the ecological processes which supported them. Over the last century construction of levees has cut off 95% of the Central Valley’s floodplains from its rivers. Today, Central Valley aquatic ecosystems no longer receive the solar energy needed to support the aquatic food web and sustain abundant fish and wildlife populations. Just like the rest of us, fish need to eat.
Fortunately, CalTrout’s research also demonstrates that restoring ecological function is possible even in intensively managed landscapes like the Central Valley if we can mimic natural floodplain processes on working agricultural floodplains. Indeed, we have a realistic chance at recovering salmon and smelt populations, even during times of drought, if we can modernize outdated water infrastructure to allow for more frequent and longer duration floodplain inundation. Doing so would improve the resiliency of both the aquatic ecosystem and California’s agricultural and urban water supply to increasingly extreme weather patterns (longer droughts and bigger floods).
The Nigiri Project
LONG-TERM GOAL
Scientifically demonstrate that productivity created by shallow inundation of floodplains is foundational to supporting self- sustaining populations of fish and wildlife in the Central Valley.
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