Guadalupe River Flood Control Project: Adaptive Management Team update (April 2009)

As part of the agreement mediated for the Guadalupe River Flood Control Project, parties formed an Adaptive Management Team, which commits to meet annually to review the results and effectiveness of mitigation measures implemented to date.

This year, on April 29th and 30th CONCUR Associate Rebecca Bryson facilitated the meeting. Parties included the SCVWD, the Guadalupe-Coyote Resource Conservation District, the Corps of Engineers, USFWS, DFG, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Parties reviewed several recommendations by SCVWD focused on making more consistent the monitoring methods and investigating/addressing a few areas where survival rate of the SRA vegetation is not as strong.  The team recommended:

• Monitoring natural recruitment of willows/cottonwoods in the downtown reach versus installing willow/cottonwood cuttings
• Removing invasive plant species from shaded riverine aquatic (SRA) cover mitigation areas
• Making consistent the monitoring methods in the Lower Guad project and officially incorporating the Lower Guad MMR into the AMT review process
• Discontinuing the Bitterlich method in favor of measuring tree basal area.
• An annual flushing of the Masson Dam to let the gravels move through to other parts of the river to provide better, more consistent fish habitat.
• Taking soil samples in locations where SRA vegetation has had low health and vigor ratings.