CHaMP is designed as a Columbia River basin-wide habitat status and trends monitoring program built around a single protocol with a programmatic approach to data collection and management (RM&E Workgroup 2010). CHaMP will result in the collection and analysis of systematic habitat status and trends information that will be used to assess basin-wide habitat conditions. When coupled with biological response indicators, this status and trends information will be used to evaluate habitat management strategies. This program will be integrated with ongoing Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Program (PNAMP) recovery planning efforts and will be part of the collaborative process across Columbia Basin fish management agencies and tribes and other state and federal agencies that are monitoring anadromous salmonids and/or their habitat. The implementation of CHaMP will characterize stream responses to watershed restoration and/or management actions in at least one population within each steelhead and spring Chinook Major Population Group (MPG) which have, or will have, “fish-in” and “fish-out” monitoring (identified in RPA 50.6), thereby meeting the requirements of RPA 56.3, RPA 57, and RPA 3. CHaMP was designed to deliver trends in habitat indicators and requires that monitoring occurs for three cycles of a sampling panel (see section 1.6), at least 9 years.

CHaMP’s  Entiat habitat monitoring program covers two distinct spatial domains with two different sampling designs.  The lower mainstem Entiat is part of the Entiat Intensively Monitored Watershed (IMW) over which substantial amount of habitat restoration has occurred or is planned for future years.  The IMW design is aimed specifically at evaluating the in-stream restoration actions using a hierarchical staircase design. The second design covers the upstream mainstem Entiat, tributaries to the Entiat, and the main tributary, Mad River with a standard CHaMP status and trends design.  The combination of the two survey designs cover the spatial domain of the Entiat Steelhead population (Steelhead (Upper Columbia River DPS) - Entiat River) and Entiat Chinook population (Chinook Salmon (Upper Columbia River Spring-run ESU) - Entiat River).

2013 Sample Design changes: In 2013,  3 sites were added to the Entiat IMW but did not affect the GRTS sample design for the Entiat.

2012 Sample Design changes:  Three factors contributed to the 2012 design changes: 1) in 2011, Terraqua sampled 18 sites in the Entiat instead of the previously planned 25 sites due to a reduced budget;  2) the Entiat sampling frame contained a large number of non-target sites due to barriers discovered during the site evaluation process; and 3)  a short section of the Mad River was included in both the status and trend and IMW frames. The culmination of these adjustments left several blocks low in available sites, specifically the transport and depositional- private strata.  Additional oversample sites were added to champmonitoring.org to supplement these blocks. If not enough sites were available for evaluation/sampling in any block, sampling was directed to blocks that have a 'large' pool of sites of the same valley class.

Depositional-private strata: There were only three in the CBW master sample, two of which were IMW, leaving only one depositional-private site in the master pool.  The one depositional-private site was listed as a site to be sampled.  If it is rejected, the effort should be moved to the depositional-public strata.

Transport Strata: Site rejections in 2011 left no additional transport sites for 2012 sampling. The master sample had a pool of only 8 sites, 7 of which were rejected because they were above a barrier.  The one below a barrier is an annual site that was sampled, which should be kept in the design.

To resolve the Entiat IMW overlap, the status and trend sites within the Mad River that overlapped with the IMW were not sampled in 2012 and the decision was made to include the overlapping section in the IMW rather than the status and trends sampling.

2011 Sample Design Summary:

The finadd.str.pnl.r function was applied to each stratum separately to generate a spatially balanced ordered site list with legacy sites at the top of the Use Order. A modified standard CHaMP design of 25 sites per year was used, including 18 annual and 7 sites to each rotating panel (3 rotating panels on a 3 year rotating cycle).    

GRTS final design: Entiat Design 7.25.2011.csv​

R code: Entiat.Design.5.19.2011.r

Legacy GRTS input file:   _1Entiat_Legacy_20110426.txt

Master GRTS input file:   _1Entiat_MS_20110426.txt

Stratum notes:

Transport:  category contained only 8 master sample sites (7 public, 1 private); all were assigned an annual panel.  This resulted in an extra “site-visit”, allocated to the depositional/private block (only one private block in depositional valley class)

Depositional and Source: The proportion of sites in public and private lands for depositional and source strata is listed below.  This guided the allocation of sites to public/private categories.

Legacy sites with coded annual, which means the sites were sampled annually in the past, were placed in the annual panel and if any carryover, were then allocated as evenly as possible to the rotating panels. This allocation continued with the legacy sites coded as annual with gaps; there were no legacy sites that were only sampled once (previous rotating panel sites).

After legacy sites were allocated to blocks, the non-legacy master sample sites were sorted into ownership by stratum.  Contiguous blocks of sites were allocated to the relevant panels, balancing across panels as evenly as possible.

There were only three private sites in the depositional valley class, assigned to panel 2.

Design Documentation files:

​​​​​EntiatDesignDocs.zip