UC San Diego Library – Scripps Digital Collection

California’s Coastal Monitoring Plan (CMP) is a design-based plan to collect statistically valid, ecologically meaningful data on the status of salmonid fishes inhabiting California’s coastal watersheds. Statistical validity comes from formal development of a sampling frame and sampling scheme for stream reaches and fish. Ecological meaning comes from a conceptual basis in high-level indicators of fish stock viability: abundance, productivity, spatial structure and diversity (McElhany et al. 2000). However, in the original technical formulation by Adams et al. (2011), monitoring methods for the northern coastal area were considerably more developed than for the coastal area from the Pajaro River southward. Key impediments in the southern area stemmed from (1) the episodic flow regime characteristic of the area’s river systems, (2) the sparse distribution of the salmonid Oncorhynchus mykiss, and (3) the need to distinguish rare anadromous forms from the more common resident form of O. mykiss. Here we update and expand the original vision of Adams et al. (2011) for the southern area.