Field Protocols / Best Monitoring Practices

State of the Salmon joined forces with public, tribal and private organizations along with individuals around the North Pacific to identify and articulate the best available salmon monitoring practices. We gathered these principles and tools into the Salmonid Field Protocols Handbook: Techniques for assessing status and trends in salmon and trout populations.

Whether surveying salmon on the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia or in the Columbia River basin in the United States, scientists need a set of standard monitoring protocols that minimize methodological errors, maximizes the validity and consistency of data, and allows them to make reliable comparisons and reasonable conclusions across projects and river basins and over time. This book’s objective is to describe a standard set of monitoring protocols and best practices that decision makers and funding organizations can adopt and practitioners can use to generate, maintain and share high-quality field data on salmonids.

Over four dozen fisheries experts throughout the U.S. Pacific Northwest and beyond contributed their time to pick, write and review the most reliable protocols for enumerating salmonids in the field. Presented in an easy-to-use format, each of the 18 peer-reviewed protocols covers objectives, sample design, data handling, personnel and operational requirements, and field and office techniques, including survey forms. The Handbook presents noteworthy advancement of existing methods and offers an important foundation for subsequent development and refinement by fisheries biologists.

Hard-copies are available for purchase from American Fisheries Society. Chapters are available for free download as .pdf files below.

Also take a look at at the Salmonid Field Protocols Handbook Book Review (124kb pdf) from the July 2008 issue of the American Fisheries Society journal.