Purpose develop and evaluate options and produce an implementable plan to create fish and wildlife benefits on historic floodplains today, 95 of the california central valley S historical…

Purpose develop and evaluate options and produce an implementable plan to create fish and wildlife benefits on historic floodplains today, 95 of the california central valley S historical floodplains are cut off from the river by levees built in the early 1900S to combat devastating floods, levees and bypasses were constructed to corral mighty rivers and push water quickly through the flood control system salmon populations started to dramatically decline with the construction of the levees simply put, the levees prevented out migrating juvenile chinook salmon from accessing floodplains, which are their primary rearing habitat and food source to address the problem of salmon access to floodplain habitat, a diverse group of government agencies, conservation groups, growers and water suppliers came together to advance a landscape scale vision of early implementation projects that will improve habitat conditions for fish, and also for birds and other wildlife, and advance actions to aid with their recovery this effort is now referred to as the floodplain forward program these early implementation projects will be operated in conjunction with new enhanced fish passage at various flood weirs to increase the frequency of floodplain activation, and optimize juvenile salmon rearing, and adult fish passage through the flood bypasses activities to be performed 1 technical assistance the recipient will assemble a technical team to provide the technical assistance needed to develop and evaluate options, and produce an implementable plan that can ultimately be permitted and financed, to create wetland benefits on 100,000 acres 2 land acquisition secure fee title to 688 acres across three properties in the floodplain of the sacramento river in colusa county when restored these properties will provide critical food source and migratory habitat for salmon in the sacramento, while also providing recreational opportunities 3 food for fish examine the direct effects of landscape scale management actions that reconnect floodplain food webs to the sacramento river ecosystems through the reoperation of existing drainage infrastructure during the winter non growing season thousands of acres of floodplain agricultural fields will be managed as surrogate floodplain wetlands to grow and deliver fish food to the lower sacramento river where salmon will benefit from these prolific floodplain derived food web resources data will be collected on water quality, zooplankton density, biogeochemical constituents, and juvenile chinook salmon growth rate scientifically investigate drivers, mechanisms, and outcomes of managed floodplain fish food production through controlled, replicated experiments specific topics to be studied include but are not limited to effects of water residence time on zooplankton density, effects of fish food export practices on waterfowl and shorebird populations, effects of fish presence on managed floodplain methane efflux deliverables outcomes meeting notesprogram budgets and schedulesstakeholder list S project factsheets and outreach materialspresentationsstakeholder meeting agendas and summarieselectronic modeling, analysis, and GIS geodata bases and filestechnical memoranda describing analyses conducted and electronic model outputstechnical memoranda describing project concepts analyzedbuyer S closing statementdeed recordingsfinal title reportup to 15,000 wetted acre inundation drain cycle per season for two seasonsmonitoring results and reportbeneficiary the public