Hood, W.G., 2009. Habitat Monitoring Strategy for the Tidal Skagit Delta Integrating Landscape and Site-scale Perspectives. Skagit River System Cooperative, La Conner, WA. pp. 44.

The Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan (SRSC & WDFW 2005) notes that tidal rearing habitat in the Skagit Delta is a limiting factor in Chinook recovery. Consequently, the recovery plan evaluates the potential for restoring 2700 acres of tidal marsh in the delta to recover Skagit Chinook populations, although the actual acreage necessary for Chinook recovery will depend on the quality of individual restoration project results, the landscape context and connectivity of the projects, and indirect and cumulative effects of landscape management—including the restoration actions themselves. The Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan describes a monitoring plan to relate the distribution, abundance, productivity, and migration timing of juvenile Chinook salmon in tidal marshes and nearshore habitats to habitat restoration (Greene & Beamer 2005). This Chinook monitoring plan is a rare example of validation monitoring (sensu Roni 2005, Roni et al. 2005) of Chinook habitat restoration that also addresses important questions about the effects of landscape structure and cumulative effects. Likewise, the recovery plan describes ongoing monitoring of returning adult salmon of all species, an activity central to harvest management as well as restoration monitoring.
Because Chinook salmon are the focus of habitat restoration in the Skagit Delta, it is logical to monitor them to evaluate their response to management actions taken on their behalf. However, only monitoring salmon is not enough, because this provides limited insight into what habitat restoration means; how or why a restoration project is a success or failure; or how restoration should be done most effectively. There are many environmental factors which affect salmon use of habitat (water temperature, dissolved oxygen content, salinity, depth, velocity; prey production within tidal channels or in habitat adjacent to channels; predation from other fish or birds; and the spatial distribution of habitat and migration corridors). Each of these factors is affected by a network of other environmental interactions. Failure to restore any one of the network links can impair the value of a presumably restored site. Consequently, additional monitoring of other system parameters is required to understand how or whether a particular restoration site, or suite of restoration sites benefits salmon. Ideally, habitat and Chinook population monitoring should be integrated to mechanistically link habitat restoration to salmon ecology. Elucidating the intervening links between restoration actions, habitat development, and salmon response will make restoration more effective and predictable. Consequently, what follows is a habitat monitoring plan, not a plan to monitor faunal populations of management interest such as Chinook salmon, waterfowl, shorebirds, Dungeness crabs, etc. If habitat quality and quantity limit population viability then habitat itself must be evaluated through monitoring to assess the need and potential for habitat protection and restoration, and to subsequently assess the efficacy of habitat protection and restoration actions. This will require integrating monitoring over a variety of scales and include effectiveness, validation, baseline, and status and trends monitoring (Roni 2005, Roni et al. 2005).
The monitoring strategy described here is habitat-centric rather than centered on any particular taxon. Chinook salmon’s legal and ecological status as a threatened species provides considerable social and political impetus to habitat restoration. However, their habitat needs often overlap with those of many other species of management interest, including other salmon, waterfowl, shorebirds, beaver, and many others. This is particularly true when Chinook habitat is viewed from a broad systemic