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Intensively Monitored Watersheds (IMWs)

 
The basic premise of Intensively Monitored Watersheds is that the complex relationships controlling salmon response to habitat conditions can best be understood by concentrating and integrating rigorous monitoring and research efforts at a few locations. Intensively Monitored Watersheds reduce the complications of monitoring project effectiveness, increase the comprehensiveness of monitoring, and increase efficiencies through shared responsibilities.
 
 

Intensively monitored watersheds are designed to address key questions in a disciplined scientific manner. All possible factors need to be considered: accurate measures of fish populations including spawners entering the watershed and juvenile migrants leaving the watershed, and accurate estimates of mortality factors such as marine conditions, harvest, hydro, predation, and other factors directly affecting salmon abundance and survival. Without a holistic approach, it will not be possible to determine the response of salmon to habitat restoration and other management efforts.

 

PNAMP supports the development of a regional framework for determining which habitat projects are most effective, including addressing habitat project implementation monitoring, effectiveness monitoring, and the response of fish populations (validation monitoring) through intensively monitored watersheds. 

 

In 2005, PNAMP recommended establishing a regional network of Intensively Monitored Watersheds (IMWs) to evaluate the effectiveness of restoration projects, programs and policies at the landscape scale. Effectiveness monitoring at the IMW scale addresses the following general questions:
 
 
  • Does the collective effect of restoration and/or management actions result in improved watershed condition and fish response?
  • Why or why not?
  • What are the causes of those responses?

 

In 2007, PNAMP's IMW group produced a white paper to describe the overall suite of action effectiveness approaches and a context for how IMWs fit in (link). In addition, the group initiated a review of the PNAMP IMW strategy and is working to estimate costs for a network of IMWs (link).
 
Next Steps:            
 
                                                                                
  •  Update the characterization of all IMWs and the IMW map (link) as needed
  • Draft results and implications of landscape classification work on IMW strategy
  •  Look at what current IMWs address and what gaps exist
  • Initiate discussion regarding technical and policy-level adjustments in the IMW network