Document Details

Workshop on the Interior Delta Flows And Related Stressors Panel Summary Report

John Van Sickle, Kenneth Rose, John Nestler, Stephen G. Monismith, Michael Healey, Mary Fabrizio | August 6th, 2014


On April 16 and 17, 2014, the Delta Science Program convened an expert Panel (the Panel) and a workshop to identify the best available science to inform the State Water Resources Control Board’s (the Board) decisions regarding interior Delta flow requirements to protect beneficial uses of water in the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Estuary (Bay-Delta Plan).

This workshop and others were convened to provide advice to the Board on issues important to updating the 2006 Bay Delta Plan. At the workshop, the Panel (consisting of the authors of this report) heard presentations from a variety of experts on Delta flows and on species and ecological responses to flow. The Panel was also provided with a selection of scientific reports relevant to the effects of interior Delta flows on fish and their environment in the Delta.

This report is informed by both the written and oral information provided to the Panel as well as by other publications that the Panel felt were necessary to satisfy its charge.  The Panel did not make a thorough independent search of the literature on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to determine if there were additional publications that were relevant to its charge.

In this report we summarize what is known about the direct and indirect relationships between interior Delta flows and listed fish species. We then use this knowledge to address a set of specific questions posed by the Delta Science Program and the Board.

Keywords

endangered species, fisheries, flows, native fish, Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta