2023 Columbia River Estuary Conference Presentations

MAY 16	MAY 17	MAY 18
Welcome and overview of the Columbia Estuary Conference Catherine Corbett - Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership Session 1: Meeting the challenge of ecosystem restoration in a changing climate A challenge to the lower Columbia River community - weaving climate mitigation into our conservation and restoration programs Catherine Corbett Blue Carbon research to establish baseline conditions and inform restoration planning in the Pacific Northwest Amy Borde, Christopher Janousek, Craig Cornu, Heida Diefenderfer, Scott Bridgham, Trevor Williams, Maggie McKeon, Matthew Brand, Katrina Poppe, John Rybczyk, Jude Apple, Boone Kauffman, Laura Brophy, and others in the PNW Blue Carbon Working Group Thermal refuge enhancement at the Horsetail/Oneonta Creek - Columbia River confluence Matt Cox & Keith Marcoe, Chris Collins Designing effective revegetation strategies for restoration projects on the lower Columbia River Simon Apostol, Ian Sinks Lessons learned for the Columbia from Puget Sound estuary restoration Dan Elefant, Sky Miller Action plan for restoring chum salmon resulting from outreach and studies of the Youngs Bay and Big Creek watersheds Graham Klag Scaling up to iImplement complex, high-risk, climate-resilient floodplain restoration Chris Collins, Curtis Loeb, Darlene Siegel, Curtis Helm, and Doug Kreuzer Restoration incorporating living shorelines, Stage 0 alluvial fans, and other design measures for climate adaptability on a 1,000 acre floodplain of the lower Columbia River Curtis Loeb, Amanda Jones, and Rowyn Cooper-Caroselli Setback levee design, construction, and monitoring for the Steigerwald Reconnection Project Wade Osborne Revegetation and carbon sequestration on a large Columbia River floodplain Doug Kreuzer, Curtis Helm, Chris Collins Connections with the nearshore ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River Hans R. Moritz, Jarod Norton, Rachel Stolt, Julia Keiter, Austin Hudson, James McMillan, Curtis Roegner, and Andrew Stevens The effects of dredged material placement on benthic assemblages at Woodland Islands Nikki Sather, Kailan Mackereth, Narmada Meenu Mohankumar Wetland reconnection and habitat restoration on South Bachelor Island: working in dredge material on the lower Columbia River Alex Uber , Nicole Czarnomski, Allen Lebovitz, Tom Josephson, and Eric Anderson New solutions for tide gates, fish passage, and working landscapes Jason Nuckols, Shonene Scott Lessons Learned for the Columbia Using Blasting to Excavate Tide Channels Dan Elefant, Sky Miller	Salmon's Journey: connecting the ocean to the land, nourishing ecosystems, and sustaining human cultures Aja DeCoteau- Executive Director - Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission Session 2: Recent Ocean Research Results and Implications Highlights from the 2022 IYS pan-Pacific winter high seas expedition Laurie Weitkamp, Ed Farley, Evgeny Pakhomov, Aleksey Somov, Mark Saunders, Vladimir Radchenko, Dick Beamish, Brian Riddell Growth, size, and survival: the impact of growth in the early ocean and lower Columbia River estuary on early ocean survival of interior Columbia River spring Chinook salmon Craig Norrie, Jessica Miller, Cheryl Morgan, Brian Burke, Brian Beckman, Laurie Weitkamp The secret lives of European green crabs: habitat utilization as revealed by acoustic telemetry Curtis Roegner, Zach Forster, David Beugli Oregon’s coordinating council on ocean acidification and hypoxia: increasing knowledge, awareness, and action on ocean change Jennifer Koester, Leif Rasmuson, Laurie Juranek The past, present, and future of the CMOP observatory at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) Mary R. Gradoville, Michael Wilkin, Sarah Riseman, Joseph Needoba, Mike Swirsky, Charles Seaton Estuaries as microbial bioreactors: relationships between organic matter, bacterial productivity, and microbial diversity in the Columbia River estuary Byron Crump, Susie Cummings, Lindy Fine, and Joseph Needoba Session 3: Assessing Restoration Site Function and Recovery Looking beyond the restoration site: lessons from the Columbia River estuary Laurie Weitkamp, Nikki Sather, Curtis Roegner, Regan McNatt, and Gary Johnson Implementing a large wood estuarine experimental design at South Tongue Point restoration Heida Diefenderfer, Kailan Mackereth, Ian Sinks, Amy Borde, Tracy Hruska, Tom Josephson, and Ryan Kilgren New applications for passive integrated transponder (PIT) interrogation in the lower Columbia River estuary Kara Jaenecke, Joe Vinarcsik, Matt Morris, Paul Bentley Tidal-hydrological dynamics of water temperature across freshwater forested wetlands Kate Buenau, Heida Diefenderfer, Amy Borde Status and trends from a decade of time series water quality monitoring in the mainstem and intertidal wetlands of the Columbia River estuary Joseph Needoba, Tawnya Peterson, Catherine Corbett Juvenile Chinook salmon diets at Environmental Monitoring Program sites in the lower Columbia estuary Kerry Accola, Jason Toft, and Jeffery Cordell Update on Oregon Water Science Center Columbia River basin contaminant studies Sean Payne Researching the presence of 6PPD-Q and roadway runoff chemicals in northwestern Clatsop County: river TALC Kelli Daffron, Ed Kolodziej Visualizing and analyzing 10 years of wetland habitat monitoring data in Tableau Ian Edgar, Sarah Kidd, Sneha Rao Manohar Multispectral UAV data for wetland plant community mapping: predicting and evaluating restoration impacts Sarah Kidd, Sneha Rao Manohar, Ian Edgar Don’t Look Up: practical methods for incorporating satellite data in monitoring Columbia River ecosystems Austin Hudson, Matthew Brand, Heida Diefenderfer, S.A. Talke, David Jay, Will Templeton, Maggie McKeon Surface elevation tables for sediment accretion measurements and sediment stake data verification Shon Zimmerman, Maggie McKeon, Heida Diefenderfer, Amy Borde Columbia River sediment loads: evaluating historical changes and observing the response of lower Columbia wetlands Maggie McKeon, David Jay, Stefan Talke, Heida Diefenderfer Collaborative analysis of sediment accretion rate data Zachary Weller, Heida Diefenderfer, Amy Borde, Ian Sinks, Tom Josephson, Sarah Kidd, Ian Edgar, Maggie McKeo	Session 4: Evaluating Performance Across Varying Spatial Scales Describing and assessing a basin-scale mitigation program: The Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife program Leslie Bach, Kris Homel Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program: documenting performance and leveraging opportunities for programmatic reporting and accountability Chanda Littles, Jason Karnezis, Lynne Krasnow, Mark Bierman, Chris Magel, Kelsey Swieca, Anne Creason Development of site evaluation cards: preliminary findings based on restoration project revisits in Fall 2022 Kim Jones, Dan Bottom, Janine Castro, Kirk Krueger, and Ron Thom Predicting near-future juvenile salmon response to water management and engineered structures across diverse tidal river conditions Andrew Goodwin Quantifying benefits of mitigation-funded dam removal in the Columbia River Basin Luke Johnson, Sky Miller Session 5: New Modeling and Data Products Columbia River estuary and nearshore data products and tools Kate Sherman, Joe Bizzarro, Jamey Selleck, Joan Drinkwin, Van Hare, Dave Fox, Tanya Haddad, Andy Lanier, Allison Bailey Modeled future wetland habitat impacts of an M9 Cascadia earthquake on the Columbia River estuary Matthew Brand, Heida Diefenderfer, David Jay, Stefan Talke, Amy Borde, Maggie McKeon The Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission (CRITFC)’s CMOP program: modeling the Columbia River from watershed to the Pacific Basin Charles Seaton, Antonio Baptista, Aja DeCoteau, Laura Gephart, Ed Meyers, Shachak Pe’eri, Greg Seroka, Mike Swirsky, and Joseph Zhang Shallow-water habitat in the lower Columbia River and estuary: a highly altered system William Templeton, David Jay, Heida Diefenderfer, Stefan Talke Lower Columbia River suspended sediment modeling and real-time data network Paul Diaz, Patrick Haluska, Will Long

MAY 16

MAY 17

MAY 18

Welcome and overview of the Columbia Estuary Conference

Catherine Corbett - Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership

Session 1: Meeting the challenge of ecosystem restoration in a changing climate

A challenge to the lower Columbia River community - weaving climate mitigation into our conservation and restoration programs

Catherine Corbett

Blue Carbon research to establish baseline conditions and inform restoration planning in the Pacific Northwest

Amy Borde, Christopher Janousek, Craig Cornu, Heida Diefenderfer, Scott Bridgham, Trevor Williams, Maggie McKeon, Matthew Brand, Katrina Poppe, John Rybczyk, Jude Apple, Boone Kauffman, Laura Brophy, and others in the PNW Blue Carbon Working Group

Thermal refuge enhancement at the Horsetail/Oneonta Creek - Columbia River confluence

Matt Cox & Keith Marcoe, Chris Collins

Designing effective revegetation strategies for restoration projects on the lower Columbia River

Simon Apostol, Ian Sinks

Lessons learned for the Columbia from Puget Sound estuary restoration

Dan Elefant, Sky Miller

Action plan for restoring chum salmon resulting from outreach and studies of the Youngs Bay and Big Creek watersheds

Graham Klag

Scaling up to iImplement complex, high-risk, climate-resilient floodplain restoration

Chris Collins, Curtis Loeb, Darlene Siegel, Curtis Helm, and Doug Kreuzer

Restoration incorporating living shorelines, Stage 0 alluvial fans, and other design measures for climate adaptability on a 1,000 acre floodplain of the lower Columbia River

Curtis Loeb, Amanda Jones, and Rowyn Cooper-Caroselli

Setback levee design, construction, and monitoring for the Steigerwald Reconnection Project

Wade Osborne

Revegetation and carbon sequestration on a large Columbia River floodplain

Doug Kreuzer, Curtis Helm, Chris Collins

Connections with the nearshore ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River

Hans R. Moritz, Jarod Norton, Rachel Stolt, Julia Keiter, Austin Hudson, James McMillan, Curtis Roegner, and Andrew Stevens

The effects of dredged material placement on benthic assemblages at Woodland Islands

Nikki Sather, Kailan Mackereth, Narmada Meenu Mohankumar

Wetland reconnection and habitat restoration on South Bachelor Island: working in dredge material on the lower Columbia River

Alex Uber , Nicole Czarnomski, Allen Lebovitz, Tom Josephson, and Eric Anderson

New solutions for tide gates, fish passage, and working landscapes

Jason Nuckols, Shonene Scott

Lessons Learned for the Columbia Using Blasting to Excavate Tide Channels

Dan Elefant, Sky Miller

Salmon's Journey: connecting the ocean to the land, nourishing ecosystems, and sustaining human cultures

Aja DeCoteau- Executive Director - Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Session 2: Recent Ocean Research Results and Implications

Highlights from the 2022 IYS pan-Pacific winter high seas expedition

Laurie Weitkamp, Ed Farley, Evgeny Pakhomov, Aleksey Somov, Mark Saunders, Vladimir Radchenko, Dick Beamish, Brian Riddell

Growth, size, and survival: the impact of growth in the early ocean and lower Columbia River estuary on early ocean survival of interior Columbia River spring Chinook salmon

Craig Norrie, Jessica Miller, Cheryl Morgan, Brian Burke, Brian Beckman, Laurie Weitkamp

The secret lives of European green crabs: habitat utilization as revealed by acoustic telemetry

Curtis Roegner, Zach Forster, David Beugli

Oregon’s coordinating council on ocean acidification and hypoxia: increasing knowledge, awareness, and action on ocean change

Jennifer Koester, Leif Rasmuson, Laurie Juranek

The past, present, and future of the CMOP observatory at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC)

Mary R. Gradoville, Michael Wilkin, Sarah Riseman, Joseph Needoba, Mike Swirsky, Charles Seaton

Estuaries as microbial bioreactors: relationships between organic matter, bacterial productivity, and microbial diversity in the Columbia River estuary

Byron Crump, Susie Cummings, Lindy Fine, and Joseph Needoba

Session 3: Assessing Restoration Site Function and Recovery

Looking beyond the restoration site: lessons from the Columbia River estuary

Laurie Weitkamp, Nikki Sather, Curtis Roegner, Regan McNatt, and Gary Johnson

Implementing a large wood estuarine experimental design at South Tongue Point restoration

Heida Diefenderfer, Kailan Mackereth, Ian Sinks, Amy Borde, Tracy Hruska, Tom Josephson, and Ryan Kilgren

New applications for passive integrated transponder (PIT) interrogation in the lower Columbia River estuary

Kara Jaenecke, Joe Vinarcsik, Matt Morris, Paul Bentley

Tidal-hydrological dynamics of water temperature across freshwater forested wetlands

Kate Buenau, Heida Diefenderfer, Amy Borde

Status and trends from a decade of time series water quality monitoring in the mainstem and intertidal wetlands of the Columbia River estuary

Joseph Needoba, Tawnya Peterson, Catherine Corbett

Juvenile Chinook salmon diets at Environmental Monitoring Program sites in the lower Columbia estuary

Kerry Accola, Jason Toft, and Jeffery Cordell

Update on Oregon Water Science Center Columbia River basin contaminant studies

Sean Payne

Researching the presence of 6PPD-Q and roadway runoff chemicals in northwestern Clatsop County: river TALC

Kelli Daffron, Ed Kolodziej

Visualizing and analyzing 10 years of wetland habitat monitoring data in Tableau

Ian Edgar, Sarah Kidd, Sneha Rao Manohar

Multispectral UAV data for wetland plant community mapping: predicting and evaluating restoration impacts

Sarah Kidd, Sneha Rao Manohar, Ian Edgar

Don’t Look Up: practical methods for incorporating satellite data in monitoring Columbia River ecosystems

Austin Hudson, Matthew Brand, Heida Diefenderfer, S.A. Talke, David Jay, Will Templeton, Maggie McKeon

Surface elevation tables for sediment accretion measurements and sediment stake data verification

Shon Zimmerman, Maggie McKeon, Heida Diefenderfer, Amy Borde

Columbia River sediment loads: evaluating historical changes and observing the response of lower Columbia wetlands

Maggie McKeon, David Jay, Stefan Talke, Heida Diefenderfer

Collaborative analysis of sediment accretion rate data

Zachary Weller, Heida Diefenderfer, Amy Borde, Ian Sinks, Tom Josephson, Sarah Kidd, Ian Edgar, Maggie McKeo

Session 4: Evaluating Performance Across Varying Spatial Scales

Describing and assessing a basin-scale mitigation program: The Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife program

Leslie Bach, Kris Homel

Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program: documenting performance and leveraging opportunities for programmatic reporting and accountability

Chanda Littles, Jason Karnezis, Lynne Krasnow, Mark Bierman, Chris Magel, Kelsey Swieca, Anne Creason

Development of site evaluation cards: preliminary findings based on restoration project revisits in Fall 2022

Kim Jones, Dan Bottom, Janine Castro, Kirk Krueger, and Ron Thom

Predicting near-future juvenile salmon response to water management and engineered structures across diverse tidal river conditions

Andrew Goodwin

Quantifying benefits of mitigation-funded dam removal in the Columbia River Basin

Luke Johnson, Sky Miller

Session 5: New Modeling and Data Products

Columbia River estuary and nearshore data products and tools

Kate Sherman, Joe Bizzarro, Jamey Selleck, Joan Drinkwin, Van Hare, Dave Fox, Tanya Haddad, Andy Lanier, Allison Bailey

Modeled future wetland habitat impacts of an M9 Cascadia earthquake on the Columbia River estuary

Matthew Brand, Heida Diefenderfer, David Jay, Stefan Talke, Amy Borde, Maggie McKeon

The Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission (CRITFC)’s CMOP program: modeling the Columbia River from watershed to the Pacific Basin

Charles Seaton, Antonio Baptista, Aja DeCoteau, Laura Gephart, Ed Meyers, Shachak Pe’eri, Greg Seroka, Mike Swirsky, and Joseph Zhang

Shallow-water habitat in the lower Columbia River and estuary: a highly altered system

William Templeton, David Jay, Heida Diefenderfer, Stefan Talke

Lower Columbia River suspended sediment modeling and real-time data network

Paul Diaz, Patrick Haluska, Will Long

2023 Columbia River Estuary Conference Posters

Water quality monitoring In tributaries of the lower Columbia River estuary

Kelli Dafron, Chris Farrar, York Johnson, Graham Klag

Tracking soil dynamics to understand plant community development in restored tidal wetlands

Sarah Kidd, Ian Edgar, Derek Marquis, Sneha Rao Manohar

How agencies assess level of risk and implications for design

Darlene Siegel, Chris Collins, Curtis Loeb

New submerged diffuser for targeted in-water placement of dredged material within the lower Columbia estuary

Hans R. Moritz, Jarod K. Norton, Aaron Litzenberg, Max Wilson-Fey, Jessica Stokke1, Travis Davidson, Todd Hash, Rachel Stolt, Doyle Anderson, Chet Thomas, Mark Wright, Neil DeRosier, Jase Ousley

Steigerwald floodplain reconnection - two reasons the project may not have happened

Allen Dysart, Curtis Loeb, Darlene Siegel, Wade Osborne, Curt Vanderzanden

Trends in lower Columbia and Willamette River water temperatures over the past 170 years

Stefan Talke, Malia Scott, Heida Diefenderfer, D.A. Jay