Solutions to California’s Drought Issues: Modeling Suggests Ways to Conserve Chinook Salmon in the Face of Water Diversion

Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha smolts emigrating the Sacramento River in California must navigate through a delta complex with water diversions that confer lower survival for entrained fish that leave the river. Russell Perry of the U.S. Geological Survey, Western Fisheries Research Center, and his colleagues fit an entrainment model to telemetry data and found that probability of water system entrainment depended on tidal flow and river discharge, with more entrainment at flood tides.

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This journal review originally appeared in the July 2015 issue of Fisheries magazine.