these components have been or are being implemented, primarily as a part of System Planning. Most 

 of these elements are relevant to any of the measures of progress discussed in this report. 



1. Experimental Design 



The precision with which SMEP will monitor program progress will depend on the amount of 

 information that is collected. Extremely intensive monitoring of all aspects of the salmonid life cycle in 

 all subbasins would produce an extremely precise measure of program progress. However, the cost of 

 such a program would likely be prohibitive. Thus a balance must be struck between the degree of 

 precision desired, and the cost of obtaining the required information. 



Because the desire would be to obtain the highest precision possible for the available funds, it is 

 not possible at this time to set the degree of precision, or, therefore, to set the cost of the overall 

 monitoring program. Some of the information pertinent to SMEP could be obtained from existing and 

 planned monitoring programs the cost of which is known. However, much of the effort would be 

 devoted to the monitoring of subbasin plans and from research to fill in specific data gaps. The 

 number of new monitoring programs that will be needed to test the production hypotheses made in 

 system planning cannot be known until the subbasin plans are available. 



As subbasin plans are implemented, the monitoring program could begin to be focused by 

 selecting a number of stocks and subbasins for intensive monitoring efforts. From a technical 

 standpoint, the monitoring sites would be selected according to a preset experimental design. This 

 design would consist of a stratification or categorization of information initially according to whether it 

 is of a system-wide or subbasin nature. Subbasin data would be further categorized by habitat, 

 biological, and management criteria. 



System information refers to parameters such as harvest rates and mainstem passage rates that 

 occur, for the most part, outside the subbasins. Subbasin data, on the other hand, is a function of 

 environmental and biological characteristics specific to a subbasin. Subbasin data is divided into 

 categories of information pertaining to production type, e.g., natural and hatchery production. This 

 includes egg and smolt carrying capacities, juvenile survival rates and hatchery management 

 scenarios. 



Classification of habitat and watershed types will be done as a part of the design of the 

 Coordinated Information System which will begin in fall of 1988. This will be discussed more fully 

 below. Indicator stocks and subbasins would be chosen from each of the blocks defined by this 

 categorization. These would be the focus of more intensive monitoring efforts to identify the efficacy of 

 specific types of actions, and to provide needed life cycle parameters. This classification of the basin 

 could also be used to guide the System Planning process in regard to selection of control subbasins 

 and stocks and the adaptive implementation of subbasin plans. 



Pertinent types of information that would be used to generate the components of the MEG 

 recommendation are shown below. These are organized according to whether they are collected at 

 the system or the subbasin level. 



I. Juvenile information by species 



a. System level by stock. 



1 . Population size at Bonneville. 



2. Passage survival rate. 



3. Individual passage survival parameters. 



