Big Partnerships

Kim Lutz … or no, some other person talking about Environmental Flow Prescriptions: an adaptive partnership

This is a pilot project partnering with USACE on retiming flows from dams – gee, where have I heard that before.  They want to get both high peaks and subsequent low discharge periods as well. At least one of the projects has peak flows < 1 kcfs, so … although it looks like they include the Missouri River.

On the Savannah River, where to release, how much and when, what change to expect – phrased as a research project. They were surprised by fish response to a managed flow – warm water caused fish to move downstream – an example of learning! Trial and error, not AM.

On the Connecticut River they have management models of the system, a big one for the whole system, and a mini Stella model to interact with managers “hands on”. That’s cool. But no indication that the models make ecological predictions, or that they use them to predict the effects prior to choosing a strategy.

OK, so they've used this on some small rivers so far, not yet on the Missouri. 

Takehome lessons: translate between modelers and ecologists – OK, I’m not always easy to understand, I get it. Iterate stakeholder analysis – also a good idea.

Hmm, still not seeing any AM.