Smith, D., Ramsden, K. and Hinton, S., 2011. Reach Level Analysis for the Middle Skagit River Assessment. Skagit River System Cooperative, La Conner, WA. pp. 60.

The middle reach of the Skagit River extends approximately 43 miles from the town of
Sedro-Woolley upstream to the confluence of the Sauk River (Map 1). The Skagit
Watershed Council targeted the Middle Skagit River in a grant to the Salmon Recovery
Funding Board intended to identify high value habitat protection and restoration
opportunities that would benefit Chinook salmon. To accomplish this goal, the Skagit
Watershed Council convened three workgroups composed of relevant stakeholders to
guide the assessment and hired contractors to complete several analyses that will be
compiled into a restoration planning document.
The purpose of this analysis was to identify priority reaches within the Middle Skagit
River to target habitat restoration and protection actions. A combination of existing data
and new data were used to define reaches within the floodplain of the Middle Skagit
River, to characterize habitat, geomorphic, and land use conditions within each of these
reaches, and to compare reaches for restoration and protection potential. These data are
also intended to be used in the next step of the Middle Skagit Assessment that will
identify and prioritize specific restoration and protection projects at a site level.
This report outlines the analysis framework that was used for evaluating reaches,
describes each of the data sets that were compiled and collected, provides maps and
summary statistics for each of the data sets, and makes recommendations for how they
can be used for evaluating floodplain reaches. Lastly, the report includes
recommendations for additional data that could be collected for more detailed site level
analysis and provides some examples of how the data contained in this report can be used
for that analysis.
Final decisions about prioritizing reaches and appropriate restoration strategies for each
reach will be made by the workgroups and described in the larger planning document.
All maps and data sets used in this analysis will be provided to the Skagit Watershed
Council for this purpose.