W. Nicholas Beer and James J. Anderson
Columbia Basin Research
School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
University of Washington
January 2000
Project goals
The first goal of this modeling exercise was to model the rate of smolt migration and survival of different life history types of chinook salmon through a reservoir in the Snake River. The second goal was to use the model to help understand how physical and behavioral processes control the fish migration and survival. An applied goal is to predict the effects of Snake River Reservoir drawdown on the survival of migrating chinook smolts. We are interested to know whether fundamental behavioral attributes of predators and prey can be used to explain population level survival as observed in the field. When the key element have been identified, we will apply the principles to an unknown and unstudied river condition (drawdown) in order to anticipate predator prey relationships.