Source: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS submitted to
CALIFORNIAN RIVER ASSESSMENT, MANAGEMENT, AND REHABILITATION
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
NEW
Funding Source
HATCH
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1013705
Grant No.
(N/A)
Project No.
CA-D-LAW-7034-H
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Program Code
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Oct 1, 2017
Project End Date
Sep 30, 2022
Grant Year
(N/A)
Project Director
Pasternack, G.
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
410 MRAK HALL
DAVIS,CA 95616-8671
Performing Department
Land, Air and Water Resources
Non Technical Summary
This project supports the mission of the Agricultural Experiment Station by addressing the Hatch Act areas of: soil and water conservation and use; plant and animal production, protection, and health; forestry, including range management and range products; multiple use of forest rangelands, and urban forestry; sustainable agriculture. Efforts are underway to assess, manage, and rehabilitate rivers to sustain healthy natural plants and animals, while also enabling use of natural resources for sustainable agricultural production and other societal uses of rivers and river waters. When these efforts fail, then federal law may restrict societal use of river water causing serious economic damage. To avoid this calamity and to promote ecosystem health, this project will further advance science-based approaches to assessing, managing, and rehabilitating rivers. Because it combines science and experience from many disciplines it is much less likely than prior approaches to result in serious unanticipated problems.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
35%
Applied
50%
Developmental
15%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
1120310205060%
1350899107040%
Knowledge Area
135 - Aquatic and Terrestrial Wildlife; 112 - Watershed Protection and Management;

Subject Of Investigation
0310 - River basins; 0899 - Wildlife and natural fisheries, general/other;

Field Of Science
2050 - Hydrology; 1070 - Ecology;
Goals / Objectives
The overall goal of this hatch project is to develop, test, and deploy science-based, interdisciplinary tools for use in assessing, managing and rehabilitating California's rivers in light of complex water resources management needs and multiple stakeholders. Concepts from fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, civil engineering, soil science, aquatic biology, and ecology have rarely been employed in combination when attempting river projects across different spatial scales. The specific objectives of the proposed research are to (1) Conduct research on the nexus between river flow and sediment influx regimes, riverine physical setting, and ecological functions; (2) Measure and monitor Californian rivers to develop and adaptively improve applied strategies for river assessment, management, and rehabilitation; and (3) Provide outreach and training to students, technicians, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, river managers, and the public to expand the understanding and utilization of best practices for river assessment, management, and rehabilitation.
Project Methods
Methods are enumerated by objective. Objective (1) involves improving the understanding of the nexus between river flow and sediment influx regimes, riverine physical setting, and ecological functions. The efforts will include conceptualizing new ideas about rivers, developing workflows that process river data to get the inputs necessary for testing the ideas, developing experimental tests, and then carrying out the experiments to determine the outcomes. A unique aspect about the efforts for objective (1) is that they will be done on both real and synthetic rivers. A synthetic river is a digital elevation model created based on river theory to have specific attributes thought to achieve a suite of specific desired river functions. The PI has been a leader in developing and publishing synthetic river design tools. Efforts will be done to continue developing these tools to further improve how rivers are specified by design. However, synthetic river research cannot be done in a vacuum, so it is necessary to also research ways to characterize real rivers better using real datasets, and then apply those lessons to synthetic rivers. For example, the PI's group developed and published the concept of "geomorphic covariance structures". These are bivariate functions that control how a river's structure changes down a river corridor. Efforts will continue to analyze real rivers for the natural, complex geomorphic covariance structures and then extract the essential patterns for use in synthetic river design. Using both real and synthetic rivers with different geomorphic covariance structures, research effort will be put into evaluating how different flow and sediment regimes interact with river structure to yield different ecological functions. Ecological functions that will be evaluated include ones for both the aquatic and riparian setting. Examples include salmonid habitat for different species and lifestages, streamwood storage and flux, and riparian recruitment. Objective (1) is inherently creative and so the best way to evaluate the performance in achieving it will involve enumerating the list of new concepts, workflows, and design tools that come out of it. Objective (2) involves measuring and monitoring Californian rivers to develop and adaptively improve applied strategies for river assessment, management, and rehabilitation. The efforts will include two approaches. First, sampling-based methodologies suitable for spanning whole regions and the State of California will be used for river assessments undertaken at those scales. Second, in light of rapid scientific and technological progress in river science, the PI developed the notion of "near-census" analysis in which one may span ~ 100 km of river and still retain details at the fine scale at which processes actually occur. The term near-census is used instead of census, because at this time the native resolution being used is ~ 1 m, so there are more detailed features at smaller scales that cannot be addressed at this time. Nevertheless, the ability to span ~100 km of river with 1 m resolution is highly informative. The detailed methods for near-census river assessment were presented in a textbook (Pasternack, 2011) and involve the following four steps: (1) use remote sensing methods to collect imagery and data at submeter resolution; (2) perform 2D hydrodynamic modeling to obtain the spatial pattern of hydraulic variables for relevant hydrological regimes; (3) perform scale-dependent analyses at watershed, subbasin, segment, reach, morphological unit, and hydraulic unit scales; and (4) synthesize results into methodological and management recommendations as well as scientific conclusions. Objective (2) is inherently analytical and so the best way to evaluate the performance in achieving it will involve enumerating the list of analyses performed for different rivers. Objective (3) involves provision of outreach and training. The efforts will involve keeping up with rapid technological developments in online delivery of information and resources, holding training sessions, and regularly participating in management activities. Evaluation will involve quantifying the training and outreach activities as well comparing the status of online resources relative to current standards. For example, it is one thing to develop a web site and another thing to insure that the website is compliant to work properly on all types of devices, like smartphones, tablets, and PCs. As another example, the PI has been at the forefront of video podcasting training lectures, so this will continue to be developed. These materials can be evaluated by quantifying the number of web pages and minutes of video provided.

Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20

Outputs
Target Audience:Federal, state, and local government scientists and managers; water and power utilities; environmental nongovernmental organizations; local landowners in Yuba County; California citizens concerned about or involved in river issues; the general public. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Trained 2 undergraduates, 4 MS student, 4 PhD students, and 4 postdocs. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Journal articles, technical reports, presentations to diverse audiences, technical workshops, Github repositories, ResearchGate.org repository, Academia.edu repository, YouTube videos, and a very large website at pasternack.ucdavis.edu. Other website are linked through this main one, including shira.lawr.ucdavis.edu and lyr.ucdavis.edu. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Continue ongoing efforts and start new projects that further the overall goals.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Major project goals are listed below along with their accomplishments. Goals listed by (#), accomplishments listed by (#a). (1) Conduct basic research on structure/function of vital instream habitat features at spatial scales ranging down from watershed to reach to hydraulic unit. This work supports increased ecological sustainability of California's landscapes. (1a) Collected data, performed analyses, developed algorithms, constructed numerical models, and published journal articles about the links between complex patterns of river topography, flow regimes, and the resulting hydraulics and channel change. (1b) Continued basic studies of the hydraulics of gravel/cobble bedded rivers (channels and floodplains) in response to landform patterns using the lower Yuba River (LYR) as a testbed. (1c) Continued studying river temperature. This involved developing the software and integrating hardware for a new technology for monitoring a gridded network of water temperature sensors. It also involved deploying several temperature strings in a reach of the LYR and receiving real-time data transmissions from a cellular connection right into a database on campus. (1d) Further expanded studies about Geomorphic Covariance Structure (GCS) theory. Coded a suite of topographic and GCS analysis algorithms in Python3. Carried out GCS analysis on field data collected at hundreds of coastal California river reaches. Carried out GCS analysis on >30 reaches in southern California for which we obtained & process airborne LiDAR data. Developed several new concepts & methods for comparing GCS among rivers. Revised a previously drafted journal manuscript about GCS for a mountain river in the Sierras based on reviews from a journal & submitted for further review. (1e) Further conducted research into machine learning (ML) algorithms to characterize river valley surface grain size distributions. Wrote a technical report about this project & presented a poster at a conference in December 2019. Began to draft a journal manuscript about this. Began a new project to apply ML to riparian vegetation presence/absence prediction. (1f) Last year we developed a new version of the River Builder software in Python3. This year, we added many new features to it and made it an open-source, free toolset available to the public on Github. Wrote and published a manual for it as well. (1g) Further developed a new software platform called River Architect that allows users to design river projects for multiple purposes to account for organism habitats, fish stranding risk, geomorphic sustainability, and project cost. River Architect is an open-source, free toolset available to the public on Github (1h) Hyporheic flow through riverbed is very important for many ecological functions. Collaborated with international scientists from Iran and Australia on flume studies and numerical models of hyporheic flow, building on previously experiments about river restoration I designed and published. Journal manuscript was drafted and submitted for peer review. (1i) Continued to develop methods to extract and analyze "large bed elements (LBEs)" from topographic point cloud datasets. Gave a poster at the American Geophysical Union conference in December 2019. (1j) Conducted a literature review on biotic and physical controls on adult salmonid migration into rivers. Prepared information towards writing a review article about this for next year. (1k) Continued research into the use of ML to predict river channel types from training data. Wrote the second journal manuscript on this topic, which is current in peer review. Applied best algorithms to all stream reaches in California, so now we have the predicted channel types throughout the state. (1l) Developed an algorithm to predict fish stranding in rivers. Submitted manuscript about it to journal for peer review. (1m) Developed an algorithm to assess streamflow records to determine if they exhibit "hydropeaking" dam operations or not. For those that do, another algorithm was developed to automatically extract hydropeaking metrics. Finally, developed an algorithm to classify streamflow gaging sites exhibiting hydropeaking into different types based on their hydropeaking metrics. (2) Characterize the fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, aquatic biology, riparian ecology, and in-stream hydraulics of degraded rivers as well as past and pending rehabilitation sites on diverse streams in California (2a) Collaborated with Yuba Water Agency on updating and improving all aspect of the 2D hydrodynamic models of the LYR for the 2017 topographic map. After models were validated, then we began running 181 discharge simulations of the entire river for use in river management and in river enhancement projects. Models are still running. (2b) Wrote reports about 2D hydrodynamic simulations of Log Cabin and Our House Dams in the Middle Yuba River catchment in support of reservoir sediment management. Also wrote a report that describes the estimated sediment erosion rates and volumes supplying these two dams. (2c) Wrote and submitted to peer review a journal manuscript that analyzes how salmonid rearing habitat has changed in the LYR from 2008 to 2014. (2d) Further improved our predictive ML model of the grain size distribution of river valley land surface sediments in the LYR. Made our intial predictive model of riparian vegetation presence/absence in the LYR. (2e) Wrote and submitted a journal manuscript in which we report the findings of the value of our fish stranding algorithm in River Architect for aiding design and assessment of river restoration and enhancement sites on. The case study addressed a project in the canyon below Englebright Dam on the LYR. (2f) Processed DIDSON imaging observations of migrating adult Chinook salmon at the Feather-Yuba Rivers confluences. Developed habitat suitability curves and microhabitat quality prediction models. Tested models against DIDSON observations. This work is ongoing (2g) Conducted new analyses and wrote a journal manuscript that not only describes topographic from 2014-2017 on the LYR, but now compares those findings to those from 1999-2008 and 2008-2014- and then evaluates changes for all three periods relative to hydrological metrics. Plan to submit manuscript for peer review next year. (2h) Worked on a manuscript to report the findings about morphological unit changes from 2008-2014 on the LYR. (2i) Revised and published a journal article evaluating the role of three different hydrological controls on explaining Sacramento catchment stream types. (2k) Applied our hydropeaking algorithms to 182 stream gages in California to find hydropeaking rivers and then classify those rivers. Wrote a journal manuscript with findings and submitted it to a journal for peer review. (3) Provide outreach and training to students, technicians, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, and river managers to expand the utilization of best practices for instream flow assessment, fluvial geomorphic analysis, and river rehabilitation design (3a) Participated in regular meetings of the Yuba Accord River Management Team to provide guidance on physical river patterns and processes to river managers. (3b) Collaborated with Yuba Water Agency and HDR, Inc. on applied studies about the LYR. (3c) Provided outreach to river stakeholders and the public to help with various river problems in California. (3d) Trained 2 undergraduates, 4 MS student, 4 PhD students, and 4 postdocs. (4) Monitor sites before, during, and after projects to adaptively improve tools and gain insights into the science of regulated rivers. (4a) We continued data collection on the Yuba River, and this data is the baseline for several major projects that are in various stages of development by all the stakeholders involved. Due to the pandemic, we curtailed our usual scope of field work as a health and safety precaution.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Schwindt, S., Pasternack G. B., Bratovich, P. M., Rabone, G., Simodynes, D. 2019. Lifespan map creation enhances stream restoration design. MethodsX 6: 756-759. DOI: 10.1016/j.mex.2019.04.004
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Guillon, H., Byrne, C. F., Lane, B. A., Sandoval-Solis, S., Pasternack G. B. 2020. Machine learning predicts reach-scale channel types from coarse-scale geospatial data in a large river basin. Water Resources Research 56 (3): e2019WR026691. DOI: 10.1029/2019WR026691.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Schwindt, S., Larrieu, K. G., Pasternack G. B., Rabone, G. 2020. River Architect. SoftwareX 11: 100438. DOI: 10.1016/j.softx.2020.100438.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Patterson, N. K., Lane, B. A., Sandoval-Solis, S., Pasternack G. B., Yarnell, S. M., Qiu, Y. 2020. A hydrologic feature detection algorithm to quantify seasonal components of flow regimes. Journal of Hydrology 585: 124787. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.124787.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Byrne, C. F., Pasternack, G. B., Guillon, H., Lane, B. A., Sandoval-Solis, S.2020. Reach-scale bankfull channel types can exist independently of catchment hydrology. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. DOI: 10.1002/esp.4874.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Pasternack, G. B. 2020. River Restoration: Disappointing, Nascent, Yet Desperately Needed. Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, Elsevier, DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.12449-2.


Progress 10/01/18 to 09/30/19

Outputs
Target Audience:Federal, state, and local government scientists and managers; water and power utilities; environmental nongovernmental organizations; local landowners in Yuba County; California citizens concerned about or involved in river issues; the general public. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Trained 2 undergraduates, 3 MS student, 4 PhD students, 4 postdocs, and 1 technician. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Journal articles, technical reports, presentations to diverse audiences, technical workshops, Github repositories, ResearchGate.org repository, Academia.edu repository, YouTube videos, and a very large website at pasternack.ucdavis.edu. Other website are linked through this main one, including shira.lawr.ucdavis.edu and lyr.ucdavis.edu. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Continue ongoing efforts and start new projects that further the overall goals.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Major project goals are listed below along with their accomplishments. Goals listed by (#), accomplishments listed by (#a). (1) Conduct basic research on the structure and function of vital instream habitat features at spatial scales ranging down from watershed to subbasin to segment to reach to morphological unit to hydraulic unit (1a) Collected data, performed analyses, developed algorithms, constructed numerical models, and published journal articles about the links between complex patterns of river topography, flow regimes, and the resulting hydraulics and channel change. (1b) Continued basic studies of the hydraulics of gravel/cobble bedded rivers in response to landform patterns using the lower Yuba River as a testbed. This work addresses in-channel and floodplain hydraulics. (1c) Continued a project looking at temperature-related physical habitat in rivers. This involved developing the software and integrating hardware for a new technology for monitoring a gridded network of water temperature sensors. It also involved deploying several temperature strings in a reach of the lower Yuba River and receiving real-time data transmissions from a cellular connection right into a database on campus. (1d) Expanded studies about Geomorphic Covariance Structure (GCS) theory. Developed two new river slope detrending algorithms in Python. Wrote a journal manuscript about GCS for a mountain river in the Sierras. Wrote a new manuscript about a new GCS study looking into a desert river north of Barlay, CA. (1e) Conducted basic research into the use of machine learning algorithms to characterize river valley land surface grain size distributions, using the lower Yuba River as a testbed. (1f) Developed a new version of the River Builder software in Python3. It has many new features and better science and math foundations. Next year we plan to make River Builder an open-source, free toolset available to the public on Github. (1g) Developed a new software platform called River Architect that allows users to design river projects for multiple purposes to account for organism habitats, fish stranding risk, geomorphic sustainability, and project cost. River Architect is an open-source, free toolset available to the public on Github (1h) California has a lot to learn from Australia, because both have regions of similar climate subjected to 2-10 years long droughts. Thus, I collaborated with scientists from the University of Melbourne in a series of four studies (all ending with published journal articles) about urban river ecohydraulics. Lessons from this work directly bear on rampant urbanization in California. (1i) Continued to develop methods to extract and analyze "large bed elements (LBEs)" from topographic point cloud datasets. Published a conference proceeding paper on this topic. (1j) Investigated and piloted the use of DIDSON imaging technology for monitoring fish behavior at river confluences. (1k) Conducted basic research into the use of machine learning algorithms to predict river channel types from training data. (1l) Worked on an algorithm to evaluate streamflow records to detect hydropeaking reservoir operations. (1m) Developed new theory and test metrics evaluating how aquatic habitat patches change with discharge. Applied it to 12 km of the South Yuba River above Washington, CA. (2) Characterize the fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, aquatic biology, riparian ecology, and in-stream hydraulics of degraded rivers as well as past and pending rehabilitation sites on diverse streams in California (2a) Conducted 2D hydrodynamic modeling of the lower Yuba River for 5 discharges using the 2017 topographic map we previously constructed (2b) Developed 2D hydrodynamic simulations of Log Cabin and Our House Dams in the Middle Yuba River catchment in support of reservoir sediment management. (2c) Wrote and published a technical report about the geomorphic sustainability of the US Army Corps Ecosystem Restoration Plan for the lower Yuba River (2d) Published two technical reports and a journal article developing habitat suitability curves for Chinook salmon and steelhead trout and bioverifying the predictive capability of meter-resolution 2D ecohydraulic models of those species' habitat preferences in the lower Yuba River. (2e) Predicted the grain size distribution of river valley land surface sediments in the lower Yuba River. (2f) Predicted salmon stranding risk in the river canyon below Englebright Dam on the Yuba River. (2g) Monitoring Chinook salmon migratory and holding behavior at the confluence of the Feather and Yuba Rivers. (2h) Monitored adult salmon upstream migration behaviors at the Feather-Yuba Rivers confluence using DIDSON underwater videography and an aerial blimp. (2i) Conducted analyses and wrote a technical report describing topographic from 2014-2017 on the lower Yuba River. (2j) Conducted analyses of morphological unit changes from 2008-2014 and 2014-2017 on the lower Yuba River. (2k) Submitted a manuscript evaluating the role of three different hydrological controls on explaining Sacramento catchment stream types. (3) Provide outreach and training to students, technicians, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, and river managers to expand the utilization of best practices for instream flow assessment, fluvial geomorphic analysis, and river rehabilitation design (3a) Participated in regular meetings of the Yuba Accord River Management Team to provide guidance on physical river patterns and processes to river managers. (3b) Collaborated with Yuba Water Agency and HDR, Inc. on testing new river restoration options for the Yuba River as part of the Voluntary Agreement to update and implement the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan. (3c) Helped several consulting firms and one non-governmental organization by giving them data, helping them with analyses, helping them to understand river conditions, and providing informal reviews of reports about rivers. (3d) Trained 2 undergraduates, 3 MS student, 4 PhD students, 4 postdocs, and 1 technician. (4) Monitor sites before, during, and after projects to adaptively improve tools and gain insights into the science of regulated rivers. (4a) We aided the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission with monitoring gravel injected below Englebright Dam. (4b) We continued data collection on the Yuba River, and this data is the baseline for several major projects that are in various stages of development by all the stakeholders involved.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Brown, R. A. and Pasternack, G. B. 2019. How to build a digital river. Earth-Science Reviews. DOI: 10.1016/j.earscirev.2019.04.028.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Watson, E. B., Gray, A. B., Pasternack, G. B., Woolfolk, A. M. 2019. Retention of alluvial sediment in the tidal delta of a river draining a small, mountainous coastal watershed. Continental Shelf Research 182: 1-11. DOI: 10.1016/j.csr.2019.05.015.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Moniz, P. J., Pasternack, G. B., Massa, D. A., Stearman, L. W., Bratovich, P. M. 2019. Do rearing salmonids predictably occupy physical microhabitat? Journal of Ecohydraulics, 1-19. DOI: 10.1080/24705357.2019.1696717
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Silva, P. V. R. M. and Pasternack, G. B. 2018. 2017 Lower Yuba River Topographic Mapping Report. Prepared for the Yuba Water Agency. University of California, Davis.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Schwindt, S., and Pasternack, G. B. 2019. Review of Proposed Lower Yuba River Ecosystem Restoration Measures Including Their Geomorphic Sustainability. Prepared for the Yuba Water Agency. University of California, Davis, CA.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Moniz, P.J. and G.B. Pasternack, 2019. Habitat Suitability Curves for Rearing Salmonids in the Lower Yuba River. Prepared for the Yuba Water Agency. University of California, Davis, CA.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Moniz, P.J. and G.B. Pasternack. 2019. Bioverification of Microhabitat Suitability Models for Rearing Salmonids in the Lower Yuba River. Prepared for the Yuba Water Agency. University of California, Davis, CA.


Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18

Outputs
Target Audience:Federal, state, and local government scientists and managers; water and power utilities; environmental nongovernmental organizations; local landowners in Yuba County; California citizens concerned about or involved in river issues; the general public. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Trained 2 undergraduates, 1 MS student, 4 PhD students, and 2 visiting scholars. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Journal articles, technical reports, presentations to diverse audiences, technical workshops, YouTube videos, and a very large website at pasternack.ucdavis.edu. Other website are linked through this main one. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Continue ongoing efforts and start new projects that further the overall goals.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Major project goals are listed below along with their accomplishments. Goals listed by (#), accomplishments listed by (#a). (1) Conduct basic research on the structure and function of vital instream habitat features at spatial scales ranging down from watershed to subbasin to segment to reach to morphological unit to hydraulic unit (1a) Collected data, performed analyses, developed algorithms, constructed numerical models, and published journal articles about the links between complex patterns of river topography, flow regimes, and the resulting hydraulics and channel change. (1b) Continued basic studies of the hydraulics of gravel/cobble bedded rivers in response to landform patterns using the lower Yuba River as a testbed. This work addresses in-channel and floodplain hydraulics. (1c) Continued a project looking at temperature-related physical habitat in rivers. This involved developing the software and integrating hardware for a new technology for monitoring a gridded network of water temperature sensors. it also involved beginning to deploy it in a reach of the lower Yuba River. At this point we have several temperature strings deployed and data is arriving on campus in real-time from the Yuba River. (1d) Continued our efforts to quantify and understand the patterns of large wood deposition in rivers in response to local and watershed scale controls. This included both data analysis and writing journal manuscripts. (1e) Expanded studies about Geomorphic Covariance Structure (GCS) theory. Published 2 articles reporting our findings for gravel-cobble rivers. Conducted analyses about GCS for mountain rivers and wrote a technical rpeort about it. Conducted a new GCS study looking into a desert river north of Barlay, CA. Wrote a new algorithm in Python for data processing and analysis to speed the time needed to do this work. (1f) Continued to develop Synthetic River Valley design tools we pioneered. We are using improvements for numerical experiments that explore how rivers work, using exmaples from California and Australia. This year we wrote an updated version of the River Builder R code to add more functionality. (1g) Published journal article showing that estuarine abandoned channel sedimentation rates record peak fluvial discharge magnitudes. A set of three sediment cores contained discrete flood deposits that corresponded to the largest flood events over the period of accretion from 1969 to 2007. manuscript is in review in Coastal Estuarine, and Shelf Science. (1h) California has a lot to learn from Australia, because both have regions of similar climate subjected to 2-10 year long droughts. Thus, I collaborated with scientists from the University of Melbourne in a study of the effect of urbanization on stream hydraulics that relate to habitat and erosion. have published 3 articles on urban river ecohydraulics. The lessons form this study have direct bearing on urbanization that is rampant in California. (1i) Continued research to determine the best way to detrend river slope out of river topography and identify objective "inundation zones" carved into river topogrpahy, including the bankfull dimensions. (1j) Undertook an analysis of water velocity to assess the relative amount that local velocity is determined by different spatial scales of topographic features. (1k) Developed a new workflow to extract "large bed elements (LBEs)" from topogrpahic point cloud datasets. (2) Characterize the fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, aquatic biology, riparian ecology, and in-stream hydraulics of degraded rivers as well as past and pending rehabilitation sites on diverse streams in California (2a) Built a new topographic map of the lower Yuba River characterizing its state in early fall 2017. (2b) Conducted 2D hydrodnamic modeling of the lower Yuba River for 118 discharges using the 2014 topographic map we previously constructed. (2c) Collected data for an evaluation of sediment retention upstream of Log Cabin and Our House Dams in the Middle Yuba River catchment. (2d) Completed analyses and wrote technical report detailing baseline hydrualics, geomorphic, and physical habitat conditions in the Yuba River from New Bulalrds Bar Dam to Colgate Powerhouse. (2e) Further improved our Sacramento River stream classification on the baiss of additional data and also constructed a river classification for the South Eel River. (2f) Published a journal article about analysis of stream hydrographs to create synthetic streamflow archetypes for all the hydrologic river types in California. (2g) Mapped the topography of the Feather River in the vicinity of the confluence of the Yuba River. (2h) Monitored adult salmon upstream migration behaviors at the Feather-Yuba Rivers confluence using Didson underwater videography and an aerial blimp. (2i) Developed new methods and conducted analyses to construct habitat suitbaility curves for fry and juvenile life stages of Chinook salmon and O. mykiss. Wrote a technical report explaining the methodology and showing the results. Also, applied the HSCs to the lower Yuba River and performed rigorous "bioverification" to yield a final, defensible microhabitat ecohydraulic model for the river for these species' life stages for river management. (2j) Continued data collection and analysis looking into the ecogeomorphology of river reaches subjected to hydropeaking flow regimes. (2k) Published a journal article about a framework and associated methods to analyze the geomorphic sustainability (aka lifespan) of many river restoration measures (i.e. restoration sites) along a river segment. (3) Provide outreach and training to students, technicians, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, and river managers to expand the utilization of best practices for instream flow assessment, fluvial geomorphic analysis, and river rehabilitation design (3a) Participated in regular meetings of the Yuba Accord River Management Team to provide guidance on physical river patterns and processes to river managers. (3b) Collaborated with Yuba County Water Agency and HDR, Inc. on the development and implementation of a framework for testing river restoration options of the Yuba River as part of the Yuba River Ecosystem Restoration Program Feasibility Study. (3c) Helped several consulting firms and one non-governmental organization by giving them data, helping them with analyses, helping them to understand river conditions, and providing informal reviews of reports about rivers. (3d) Trained 2 undergraduates, 1 MS student, 4 PhD students, and 2 visiting scholars. (3e) Major outreach activities to scientists and river managers in Australia. Though not in California, this brings a lot of our California work to the world stage, which is important, too. (4) Monitor sites before, during, and after projects to adaptively improve tools and gain insights into the science of regulated rivers. (4a) We aided the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission with monitoring gravel below Englebright Dam. (4b) We continued data collection on the Yuba River, and this data is the baseline for several major projects that are in various stages of development by all the stakeholders involved.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Barker, J., Pasternack, G. B., Bratovich, P., Duane, M., Wyrick, J. R., Johnson, T. 2018. Kayak drifter surface velocity observation for 2D hydraulic model validation. River Research and Applications. DOI: 10.1002/rra.3238.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gray, A. B., Pasternack, G. B., Watson, E. B. 2018. Estuarine abandoned channel sedimentation rates record peak fluvial discharge magnitudes. Estuarine, Coastal, and Shelf Science 203 (2018) 90-99. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecss.2018.02.007
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Lane, B. A., Pasternack, G. B., Sandoval-Solis, S. 2018. Integrated analysis of flow, form, and function for river management and design testing. Ecohydrology. DOI: 10.1002/eco.1969.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Pasternack, G. B., Baig, D., Webber, M., Brown, R. 2018. Hierarchically nested river landform sequences. Part 1: Theory. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. DOI: 10.1002/esp.4411.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Pasternack, G. B., Baig, D., Webber, M., Brown, R. 2018. Hierarchically nested river landform sequences. Part 2: Bankfull channel morphodynamics governed by valley nesting structure. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. DOI: 10.1002/esp.4410.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Lane, B. A., Sandoval-Solis, S, Stein, E. D., Yarnell, S., Pasternack, G. B., Dahlke, H. 2018. Beyond metrics: the role of hydrologic baseline archetypes in environmental water management. Environmental Management. DOI: 10.1007/s00267-018-1077-7.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Schwindt, S., Pasternack G. B., Bratovich, P. M., Rabone, G., Simodynes, D. 2019. Hydro-morphological parameters generate lifespan maps for stream restoration management. Journal of Environmental Management 232: 475-489. DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.11.010.