Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Science Plan
Independent Peer Review

Background

The Bay-Delta watershed is a focal point of California’s water supply and an important ecosystem for many species, and includes the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, the Delta, Suisun Marsh, and San Francisco Bay. The State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) is responsible for protecting water resources and fulfills its responsibilities to the Bay-Delta through the adoption and implementation of the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Water Quality Control Plan (WQCP).

Orientation and Focus

The Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Program (Program), described in the March 29, 2022, Memorandum of Understanding and Term Sheet, is proposed as an alternative pathway for updating and implementing the Sacramento River, Delta, and Tributary updates to the Bay-Delta Plan. The scientific rationale for the Program’s approach of providing both environmental flows and habitat improvements for native fishes is described in the 2023 Draft Scientific Basis Report Supplement in Support of Proposed Voluntary Agreements for the Sacramento River, Delta, and Tributaries Update to the WQCP (SWRCB 2023), and the forthcoming Draft Scientific Basis Report Supplement In Support of Proposed Voluntary Agreements for the Tuolumne River.

The purpose of the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes Science Plan (Science Plan) is to provide the framework and approach for assessing the Flow and Non-Flow Measures included in the Program. In the Science Plan, the hypotheses, monitoring, and analyses describe a range of potential approaches for assessing the biological and ecological outcomes of the Program. The Science Plan will inform tributary, Delta, and project-specific science plans and guide the development of additional monitoring for priority areas of focus in a manner that provides comparability among datasets, active experiments, decision support modeling, data analyses, and synthesis needed to fill knowledge gaps to assess the outcomes of the suite of Program measures and inform ongoing and future decision-making.

This independent scientific peer review focuses on assisting the Program’s Science Committee in improving the Science Plan. The review should consider the extent to which the Science Plan can support the development of system-specific science plans that produce interoperable datasets for common metrics and the ability of the Science Plan to meaningfully support the development of the triennial reports and Ecological Outcomes Analysis Report that would be required in the seventh year of the program to inform the SWRCB decision as to whether to continue, modify, or terminate the Program after eight years of implementation.

Peer Review Letters

The Delta Science Program coordinates reviews in accordance with its mission to provide the best possible unbiased scientific information to inform water and environmental decision-making. As requested by the Department of Water Resources, the review will include individual Review Letters developed by the Reviewers which will address the Review Questions in the Charge based on their expertise.

View DWR’s request letter to Delta Lead Scientist, Dr. Lisamarie Windham-Myers

View Dr. Windham-Myers's response in PDF format.

Review Materials

Review documents

Supplemental Material

Charge to the Independent Review Panel

The Charge to the independent review panel provides the direction, context, and timeline for the review. The Charge includes orientation and focus for the review effort, support materials to be considered, and specific questions for the Reviewers to address during the review process.

View the Charge.

Reviewers

Dr. Steven Brandt

Brandt Scientific Consultants LLC

Dr. Stephen B. Brandt is a Professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences at Oregon State University, where he specializes in fish ecology and management in marine and freshwater ecosystems. He served as the Director of the Oregon Sea Grant Program and chaired the university’s inaugural Marine Council. Previously, he held faculty positions at the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, SUNY College at Buffalo, and SUNY ESF Syracuse and spent 5 years studying deep-sea fishes off Australia. Dr. Brandt directed the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory for 12 years and earned the President’s Rank Award. There, he created the NOAA Invasive Species Center and created and led the NOAA Center of Excellence for Great Lakes and Human Health. He has written over 150 publications (H-index = 50) and given over 300 scientific presentations on food webs, fish bioenergetics and habitat quality, physical/biological interactions, hypoxia, and ecosystem forecasting spanning the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, Gulf of Mexico, Adriatic Sea, South Pacific, Western Atlantic, California Delta, and small lakes. Dr. Brandt received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Oceanography and Limnology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was elected President of the International Association for Great Lakes Research and received their highest award. He recently spent 10 years on the Independent Science Board of the Delta Stewardship Council, during which time he was twice elected as Chair. He also spent over 10 years as the OSU extension administration representative on the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board.

Dr. Josh Korman

Ecometric Reseach INC.

Dr. Josh Korman’s main research interest is in understanding the effects of physical and biological processes on recruitment in freshwater fishes. In particular, he’s interested in how flow regimes in regulated rivers influence habitat use, growth, movement, and survival of early life stages. Dr. Korman has been running field efforts to address these questions for more than 25 years. He spends much of his time organizing and participating in field efforts and developing and applying models to analyze data from these programs.

Dr. Korman’s other main research interest is the development of models for fisheries stock assessment and management. Examples include: 1) development of management strategy evaluation models to evaluate harvest strategies; 2) Bayesian mark-recapture modeling; 3) integration of mark-recapture and radio telemetry data to estimate steelhead and salmon escapement; 4) integration of genetic stock identification and coded wire tag data to estimate basin-wide Chinook escapement; and 6) population viability models. Dr. Korman also has expertise in developing monitoring programs to support larger Adaptive Management efforts.

Dr. Mike Runge

United States Geological Survey’s Eastern Ecological Science Center

Dr. Mike Runge is a senior scientist with the United States Geological Survey’s Eastern Ecological Science Center, where he has worked since 1999. His research focuses on using decision theory, quantitative analysis, and predictive modeling to inform wildlife and public health management. He has worked on projects with migratory birds, National Wildlife Refuges, water management on large rivers, endangered species, marine mammals, wildlife, veterinary, and human diseases. He currently sits on scientific advisory panels for the Chesapeake Bay, the Great Barrier Reef, an Australian Antarctic partnership, and North American waterfowl harvest management. He co-designed the decision science curriculum for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center. Mike received a B.A. in biology and philosophy from Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Arts in Teaching in Biology from Spalding University, and a Ph.D. in wildlife science from Cornell University. He spent a sabbatical year at the University of Melbourne in 2009-2010. He has climbed all 46 high peaks in the Adirondacks with his wife and kids.