Intellectual Merit
The goal of the proposed Research Coordination Network is to develop and sustain facilitated interactions of multiple research, government and stakeholder entities focused on restoring diadromous fish populations throughout the North Atlantic region. The strength of this RCN is in its connection to and integration with the Penobscot River Restoration Project, the most ambitious restoration effort ever proposed for a watershed of this size. Within this context unparalleled opportunities exist to study questions fundamental to diadromous fish ecology and restoration, including: the role of diadromous fish in marine-freshwater linkages, the interdependency of co-evolved diadromous species, multi-species interactions in a restoration context, and the effects of multiple stressors on restoration results.
The RCN will work to coordinate the overlapping/interconnected research efforts of academic, government and watershed stakeholders, provide administrative structure, and support data management. There are strong incentives to join the network: collaboration opportunities with a diversity of research groups, shared resources, reduced redundancy of effort, interdisciplinary hypothesis development, the ability to link cutting-edge research with agency missions and NGO objectives, and outstanding interdisciplinary educational opportunities for students. This grant will support two scientific meetings to identify critical research areas in multi-species restoration (Year 1) and synthesize outcomes (Year 5), and three interactive workshops targeting critical research topics (Years 2, 3 and 4). It will also provide salaries for research and information coordinators and summer salary for students. We anticipate at least one synthesis paper per workshop and several master’s theses focused around workshop topics and diadromous species. Evaluations, member feedback, reports, quarterly meetings with core members, and other mechanisms will be used to assess progress and success.
Broader Impacts
The issue of diadromous fish restoration is complex and it is only through a broad collaborative approach drawing on data and knowledge from other systems, worldwide, that progress may be achieved and mis-steps minimized. Through RCN-facilitated research partnerships that place mission-driven restoration efforts in an integrated science context, key basic and applied research needs can be identified that might otherwise be overlooked. By actively engaging stakeholders, the RCN will facilitate public understanding of the critical role that science plays in guiding ecological restoration.
Introduction
There is a pressing need for coordinated research programs focused on understanding and restoring diadromous fish assemblages, yet these efforts can be difficult to create and sustain. For example, different agencies often have disparate objectives and focus on dissimilar space and time scales, which can produce a complex landscape of research and management activities. These and other differences can dissuade groups from working together to coordinate data collection, assemble fully integrated data sets, and maximize potential synergies between basic and applied research programs. In contrast, when organizational structures can be established in which monitoring, research and experimentation become complementary components of an integrated science agenda, significant advances can occur in both understanding and management (Kratz et al. 2003, Turner et al. 2003). The proposed Research Coordination Network (RCN) is modeled on several key attributes of the Long Term Ecological Research Network, in which outside funding helps facilitate, focus and support the efforts of academics and agencies to examine complex ecological questions. The central goal of this RCN is to leverage, expand, and integrate the diverse array of research and management activities focused on the restoration of diadromous species in ways that improve ecological understanding and enhance restoration outcomes.
Historically, diadromous fish contributed to the sustenance and economic growth of the Atlantic states. However, since the industrial revolution the tolls of environmental stress, overfishing, and habitat loss were to become apparent in the longest settled parts of the country (Field 1914, Oviatt et al. 2003). Although there is now a popular drive to remove dams (Born et al. 1998, Crane 2005), with the benefit of reintroducing and rehabilitating diadromous fish runs (Lindloff 2003, Hill 2007) the unavoidable question is whether the domino effect of collapsing runs and species can be reversed. In many places dams were the coup-de-grace, eradicating diadromous fish runs altogether (NRC 2004). Beyond dams, multiple stressors have continued to complicate diadromous fish recovery in most locations. Debris choked rivers in New England and Maritime Canada before the 1960s (Perley 1852, Rounsefell and Stringer 1945) and chemicals and toxins remain a persistent problem (McMaster et al. 2006). Fish communities within rivers and estuaries have changed considerably since the full compliment of diadromous fishes were abundant. The most recent challenge faced by diadromous fish is global climate change and the predictions of physical habitat change and range shifts for diadromous species (NRC 2004, Solomon et al. 2007).
Weight of evidence suggests that single-species management may not change the fate of Atlantic salmon and other declining diadromous species (Pauly et al. 2002). Almost 4 million smolts and parr were stocked in Maine rivers in 2004 with a two-year return of just over 1,000 adults, a 0.03% return rate (Keliher 2004; Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission 2006 unpublished data). There may be a complex interplay within the diadromous species assemblage that has yet to be explored. In Pacific salmon interplay between species is an accepted paradigm (Cederholm et al. 1999, Naiman et al. 2002, Schindler et al. 2003), but in North Atlantic rivers the potential interactions between a diverse community of diadromous fishes is only just being addressed. For example, spring spawning species in Atlantic rivers deposit marine-derived nutrients in freshwater habitats (Durbin et al. 1979, Browder and Garman 1994, Cunjak et al. 2007) and have overlapping spawning habitats (e.g., lamprey and Atlantic salmon; Nislow and Kynard 2007). Like a jigsaw puzzle, loss of one piece may be preventing other interlocking ecological relationships from occurring in these rivers, suppressing production in the full suite of diadromous fish.
