The session goals are to determine to what extent and how other factors, such as hatcheries, ocean conditions, and harvest, need to be included in the scenarios.

Lead Speakers:

Libby Logerwell

Libby Logerwell (Libby.Logerwell@noaa.gov) is currently a Research Fishery Biologist at Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Her current research is focused on the interactions between commercial fisheries, environmental conditions, groundfish and endangered Steller sea lions. During her previous position, as a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Science (University of Washington), she examined the relationships between oceanographic conditions and survival of Oregon coho salmon.

Libby received a B.S. from Stanford University in 1988, and a PhD. from University of California, Irvine in 1997 on the foraging ecology of marine birds. In addition to post-doctoral research on coho salmon, she has conducted post-doctoral studies of the bioenergetics and habitat associations of California Pacific sardine.

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Pete Lawson

Pete Lawson is currently a research fishery biologist at the Northwest Fisehry Science Center of NMFS. He came to this position by a circuitous route that could be said to have started in 1972 on the Nisqually Delta where he spent a winter cruising the mudflats, watching waterfowl, shorebirds, and raptors while a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia. Pete then migrated to Alpine, Texas. Under the auspices of the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute he traveled from Wyoming to Venezuela studying parrots and falcons. In Texas he built radio-controlled model gliders in the shape of hawks and used them to search for peregrine falcon eyries. When that era came to a close Pete changed gears to study stream ecology at Idaho State University. there, he used an Apple II to model foraging behavior of mayfly nymphs. He received an M.S. in 1984 and Ph.D. in 1986,. Needing a job, he moved to Newport, Oregon to work as a biometrician and modeler for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. There he became interested in climate effects on coho salmon and gained experience with fisheries management and an appreciation for the value of applied research. He has served on advisory commitees to the Pacific Fishery Management Council and the Pacific Salmon Commission since 1987. In 1997, after ten years with ODFW Pete joined NMFS. Pete's models have been used to predict salmon runs, estimate harvest impacts, elucidate the non-landed mortality in selective fisheries, and, with Tom Nickelson, explore coho salmon population dynamics with a fine-grained, habitat-based life-cycle model. He insists that, in order to understand salmon populations for risk assessment and conservation, you must integrate the across both freshwater and marine phases of the life cycle.

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Peter Kareiva

Dr. Peter Kareiva (pkareiva@tnc.org) is the Lead Scientist for the Pacific division of the Nature Conservancy. Prior to this appointment he served as Director of the Division of Conservation Biology at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center and as faculty member in the Department of Zoology at University of Washington. He applies mathematical models to conservation issues including risk assessment research for salmon on the west coast of North America with responsibility for recovery planning science and conservation decisions pertaining to a wide variety of marine issues.

Libby Logerwell

1. Can you provide examples of salmon models that have incorporated changes in prey availability, particularly in regards to marine growth and survival?

2. Are the behaviors of stellar sea lions predictable enough to be successfully incorporated into a salmon habitat model?

3. Since a large population of hatchery fish come out of estuaries, do the sea lions congregate there more often? And does sea lion predation have a large influence on wild salmon survival?

Pete Lawson

1. How can quantitative salmon models be relied upon for planning purposes when the probability of salmon survival varies from stream to stream?

2. What are current decision support systems for salmon habitat restoration?

3. Can you discuss the Federal court ruling that does not distinguish between hatchery born and naturally spawned wild salmon for the purpose of ESA listings. Do you anticipate that the ruling will be upheld and affect salmon protection efforts.

Peter Karieva

1. Could you discuss how restoration scenarios might fit into an adaptive management process? Can we use such scenarios to speed up an adaptive management process, running some nested "what-if" scenarios and anticipating the most likely management outcomes?

2. How does the Nature Conservancy prioritize actions based on uncertain model results?

3. What challenges do you face when conveying modeling results (probably with a high degree of uncertainty) to an NGO like the Nature Conservancy's executive board?

4. Performance evaluation is an important aspect of model development and commonly we evaluate performance by comparing model output to empirical data from a similar ecosystem. However, when attempting to model processes occurring within a framework of ecosystem recovery, we typically do not have empirical data sets from recovered or recovering systems upon which to compare and evaluate model performance. In your work, how do you evaluate model output for systems where you are implementing restoration? For example, if someone were to develop a LWD recruitment model for Ellworth Creek watershed for the 100 years following the end of timber extraction, how would you suggest they evaluate the performance of the model, given we know very little about recovery processes in riparian forests and headwater systems?