Hallwood Floodplain and Side Channel Restoration Project - Validation Studies on the Yuba River in Yuba County, 2023-2025
Year: 2026
Type: dataset
Abstract: Cramer Fish Sciences (CFS), Verdantas (formerly cbec, inc. Eco-engineering), and South Yuba River Citizen’s League, funded and directed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s Anadromous Fish Restoration Program (USFWS AFRP), teamed to plan, design, monitor, and perform regulatory compliance for the Hallwood Side Channel and Floodplain Restoration Project (Project) on the Yuba River, California. The Project is designed to restore and enhance ecosystem processes, with a primary focus on improving productive juvenile salmonid rearing habitat to increase natural production of fall and spring-run Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha and steelhead O. mykiss in the Yuba River. The Project enhanced up to 157 acres of seasonally inundated riparian floodplain habitats, 1.7 miles of perennial side and alcove channels, and more than 6.1 miles of seasonal side channels. The design approach focused on removing unnatural constraints (such as a mid-river training wall and very coarse surface materials left from mining activities) in order to allow natural river and floodplain processes to function. Construction planning efforts included multi-year phasing to remove about 3.2 million cubic yards of material from the site while optimizing habitat establishment in early years and minimizing disturbance to existing high quality riparian and aquatic habitat. The Project included a robust monitoring program that measured the effect of restoration on a range of ecological parameters thought to influence salmonid habitat use and productivity and riparian ecosystem function using a Before-After-Control-Impact study framework. Specifically, we monitored salmonid and non-native predator density, juvenile salmonid growth and residence time, predation, invertebrate prey (drift) density and biomass, and changes in acreage of a range of habitat types, including terrestrial and aquatic vegetation. We also examined factors influencing natural riparian tree recruitment following restoration. This dataset includes beach seine survey data that was collected as part of Project effectiveness monitoring during spring 2023, 2024 and 2025. The primary purpose of these surveys was to recapture tagged Chinook Salmon to assess growth and rearing at the Hallwood Side Channel and Floodplain Restoration Project (Project), at a control backwater site that is similar habitat to the pre-Project condition, and at a second control site that represents available unrestored off-channel habitat in the Yuba River. The first haul at each of the sites was used to assess salmonid densities and fish communities. This dataset also includes stomach samples from juvenile salmon and potential salmonid predators collected in all study years (2016, 2021-2025). The purpose of these samples was to assess stomach fullness and prey composition for and predation on juvenile salmon rearing at the Project and control sites. Salmon were generally collected near the end of the study period and predator stomach samples were collected during two or three seine events immediately following tagged fish release.
Language: English
Subfield: Nature and Landscape Conservation
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7161995672