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Overview of ISAB reviews from 1996 to 2009
[This collection is a subset of the full ISAB library.]
Over the past thirteen years the Independent Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB) has completed 70 reports. Although the majority of ISAB assignments have been on mainstem passage issues for anadromous salmonids, the ISAB's body of work has addressed most key issues in the Columbia River Basin and informed the development of the Council's program, NOAA Fisheries' recovery efforts, and tribal restoration programs. With the growing number of ISAB reports, the summary below is intended to guide readers to ISAB reports that are of greatest interest to them.
State of the Science Reviews
The Council's 2000 Fish and Wildlife Program directed the Council to work with the ISAB to develop a series of reports to survey past research and summarize the state of the science in key areas — "State of the Science" reviews. Although many ISAB reviews have been specific to the programs of the Council or NOAA Fisheries, most reviews apply to crosscutting, or state of the science issues, spanning programs and legal mandates including those of the Tribes. When the ISAB completed its review of harvest management in 2005, it essentially had completed major reviews of the key scientific issues that basin programs have focused on, i.e., the all Hs (hydro, hatcheries, harvest, and habitat). In addition to the harvest review (ISAB 2005-4), the ISAB has completed comprehensive reviews of the potential effects of hatchery supplementation practices on salmon recovery (ISAB 2003-3), tributary habitat recovery strategies (ISAB 2003-2), flow augmentation (ISAB 2003-1), salmon recovery strategies/plans (ISAB 2001-7), and mathematical modeling and analytical tools (ISAB 2001-1).
In 2006, the ISAB shifted focus to issues that had received less
attention in program planning – climate change, human development, and
non-native species. The ISAB’s report on climate change impacts states that
the warming of the global climate is unequivocal and will have a variety of
impacts on aquatic and terrestrial habitats (ISAB
2007-2). The ISAB’s human population report finds that the impact of
human settlement in the
In 2009, the ISAB and Independent Scientific Review Panel (ISRP)
completed a comprehensive review of fish tagging technologies used in
Council's Fish and Wildlife Program
The ISAB and its predecessor the Independent Scientific Group (ISG) have
played a key role in the iterative development of the Council's Fish and
Wildlife Program. A major contribution of the Independent Scientific Group,
with further refinement by the ISAB, was the 1996 report Return to the River
(ISG 1996, updated in 2000,
and published in 2006 by Elsevier Academic Press). In the report, the
Independent Scientific Group developed a conceptual foundation based on the
premise that an ecosystem with a mix of natural and cultural features can
sustain a broad diversity of salmon populations in the
Several ISAB reports influenced the development of the Council's 2003 Mainstem Amendments. Specifically, the ISAB reviewed the Council's commissioned report on the status of mainstem passage strategies (ISAB 2002-1). This review gave the Council confidence in understanding the current state of the science and attendant uncertainties. Specifically the ISAB emphasized the need to better understand the effects of load following. In addition, ISAB reports on the effects of the operations of Hungry Horse and Libby reservoirs on resident and anadromous fish informed the development of the program (ISAB 97-3) and subsequent approaches to implement the Mainstem Amendments (ISAB 2004-2). The ISAB's report highlighted the likely measurable effects of operations on resident fish and the difficulty of measuring the impact on migrating salmon.
The ISAB and ISRP jointly reviewed the set of plans for 58 subbasins (ISRP&ISAB 2004-13). This review helped the Council develop a program adoption strategy and identify plans that were based on the best available science and thus ready for adoption, as well as plans that needed additional work. The review also identified that most plans needed improvement in the area of integrating artificial production and habitat restoration activities. The Council acted on this subject through its Artificial Production Review Evaluation and basinwide objective efforts in 2004 and 2005 (see All-H Analyzer, ISRP&ISAB 2005-5).
In 2005, the Council developed a draft Research Plan that relied on
findings from ISAB, ISRP, and ISG reports to identify key uncertainties
facing fish and wildlife resource management in the
In 2009, to effectively communicate their Fish and Wildlife Program to Congress, the Council created a list of High Level Indicators, which the ISAB and ISRP reviewed and made suggestions for improvement (ISAB 2009-2). The ISAB and ISRP also jointly reviewed the Salmonid Field Protocols Handbook for the Fish and Wildlife Program to ensure that it furthers the goal of developing an effective regional monitoring and evaluation plan by establishing standard protocols for collecting salmonid population and habitat data (ISAB 2007-5).
NOAA Fisheries' Recovery Science Analyses
The ISAB has served an important role for NOAA Fisheries in peer
reviewing its analytical approaches for developing biological opinions and
recovery plans. In 2008 the ISAB completed a review of seasonal
transportation versus spill in the
The ISAB has also reviewed NOAA Fisheries’ Technical Recovery Team (TRT) draft analyses for developing recovery plans (ISAB 2003-4), including an examination of the TRT’s matrix models (ISAB 2008-1), and provided advice on evaluating the viability of Evolutionarily Significant Units (ESU) that contain hatchery and natural or resident and anadromous populations (ISAB 2005-2). In the latter review, the ISAB recommended that, "Evaluation of ESU viability should rest not only on the numbers of component populations or on the abundance and productivity of those individual populations, but also should be based on the population dynamics within the ecosystem as a whole. This concept of ESU viability does not tolerate the loss of either the anadromous or resident life history form from any given ESU, because that loss would represent a loss in diversity for the ESU that would put its long-term viability at risk."
Lastly, the ISAB has completed four reports on the Comprehensive Passage Model (COMPASS), which was created by NOAA Fisheries with input from federal, state, and tribal agencies and the University of Washington (ISAB 2008-3, ISAB 2006-7, ISAB 2006-6, ISAB 2006-2). COMPASS predicts the effects of alternative hydropower operations on salmon survival rates and provides ongoing evaluation for the new Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion (BiOp). The ISAB found COMPASS to be a welcome addition to the analytical tools available to both scientists and managers, and the iterative ISAB critiques helped NOAA Fisheries improve the documentation and use of the tool.
The Columbia River Tribes help define ISAB assignments and provide
briefings on research results that are evaluated and incorporated in ISAB
reports. In 2009, at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s
request, the ISAB provided comments on the draft Tribal Pacific Lamprey
Restoration Plan for the
These and other ISAB reports form a body of work that has been directly applied to refinement and development of regional programs, study designs, analytical approaches, and public understanding.