About the developers

Biographies of the developers

     This Salmon Monitoring Advisor site was developed by a working group of scientists through a series of workshops from March 2008 - March 2010. These meetings were funded by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a non-governmental conservation organization based in Palo Alto, California. The grant was administered through the United States National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara, California. NCEAS also provided logistical support for the workshops. The working group was composed of 14 scientists with extensive experience in a variety of governmental and non-governmental organizations:

• United States Environmental Protection Agency
• United States National Marine Fisheries Service
• Canada Department of Fisheries and Oceans
• Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
• Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
• State of the Salmon in Portland, Oregon
• Washington State Governor's Salmon Recovery Office
• Alaska Department of Fish and Game
• Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission
• Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
• United States National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis

     Collectively, this team of scientists has more than 275 person-years of experience in the design and implementation of monitoring programs, as well as the analysis and communication of their results to decision makers, scientists, and stakeholders. Most of this experience has been with Pacific salmon.

Randall M. Peterman

Randall M. Peterman (peterman@sfu.ca), the project lead for this working group, is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in "Fisheries Risk Assessment and Management" in the School of Resource and Environmental Management, Faculty of Environment, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. He specializes in quantitative methods to improve fish conservation and fisheries management. His research focuses on: (1) fish population dynamics, (2) methods for estimating and accounting for uncertainties that affect conservation risks and management decisions, and (3) approaches to reducing uncertainties. A common theme in his research is how uncertain future climatic conditions can be tracked and dealt with effectively by fisheries managers and conservation organizations. His research team uses spatially extensive data sets, simulation models, Bayesian and other statistical methods, and formal decision analysis.
See external site

Peter B. Adams

Peter B. Adams (pete.adams@noaa.gov) is the recently retired Fisheries Investigation Chief of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, Santa Cruz, California, U.S.A., where he had overall responsibility for providing scientific advice on Southwest salmon and groundfish, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and harvest management.  This Investigation provides scientific advice on a wide range of salmon and groundfish management issues in the Southwest.  His personal research focus has been on: (1) assessing population viability under the ESA, (2) harvest advice including the use of life history theory, (3) sample survey design, and (4) methods to communicate the level of uncertainty associated with estimates to decision makers.  The Fisheries Investigation uses a wide range of simulation, statistical and habitat modeling, acoustic and PIT tagging studies, remote sensing spatial analysis, and economic analysis.
See external site

Brigitte Dorner

Brigitte Dorner (b_dorner@alumni.sfu.ca) has worked on this project as a post-doctoral fellow with Randall Peterman at the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University. She specializes in research on environmental factors affecting survival of salmon in the ocean and closed-loop simulation models for evaluating alternative salmon management strategies in the presence of outcome uncertainty (sometimes called implementation error) and climate change. In this monitoring project, she led the simulation analysis of alternative monitoring designs that aim to estimate the relative importance of different causal mechanisms (e.g., climatic change vs. human disturbance in freshwater habitats) behind observed changes in salmon productivity. Brigitte previously worked on two projects related to monitoring: (1) synthesizing principles of experimental design for salmon restoration projects in Alaska, and (2) reviewing risk assessment and management frameworks for human effects on fish habitat. Brigitte’s other interests include adaptive management, risk assessment and management, and use of GIS and remote sensing in ecological models. Brigitte currently works as a consultant while based on Lasqueti Island, B.C., Canada.

Doug Drake

Doug Drake (drake.doug@deq.state.or.us) is the Lower Willamette Basin Coordinator for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality in Portland Oregon.  He has over 22 years of experience in aquatic biological monitoring in support of a number of agency programs: Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's EMAP program, development of sediment benchmarks, and implementation of watershed protection and monitoring plans.  The emphasis of his work has been around integrating watershed-level approaches using adaptive management and appropriate effectiveness monitoring schemes.  A focus area has been linking ecological indicators to the goals and objectives of Oregon’s implementation of the Clean Water Act.

Harold J. Geiger

Harold J. Geiger (shrg@ak.net) is the Chief Scientist for the St. Hubert Research Group in Juneau, Alaska. From 1982 to 2007 he held several positions at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, including the position of Chief Biometrician for the Commercial Fisheries Division. He has worked on the effects of salmon hatcheries, riverine sonar applications, forecasting, stock separation applications, salmon management, and conservation biology. Currently, most of his work involves the use of scientific sampling and statistics in fisheries.

Kendra R. Holt

Kendra R. Holt (Kendra.Holt@dfo-mpo.gc.ca) contributed to this research while working as a research assistant with Randall Peterman in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.  She specializes in using simulation models to examine trade-offs between sampling effort and the reliability of estimated abundance indicators in salmon monitoring programs.  In this salmon monitoring project, her research involved developing and using such models to compare the performance of alternative sampling designs and methods of data analysis, including hierarchical modelling of multiple observation sites in the context of indicators of conservation concern.  Kendra has also been involved in the collection of monitoring data while working as a field technician on salmon stock assessment programs.  She currently works as a stock assessment biologist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Nanaimo, B.C.

Chris Jordan 

Chris Jordan (chris.jordan@noaa.gov) is a Research Fisheries Biologist with NOAA/NMFS’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Program Manager for the Mathematical Biology and Systems Monitoring Program.  His current work focuses on the design and implementation of large-scale monitoring programs to assess anadromous salmonid freshwater habitat and population status as well as the watershed-scale effect of management actions on salmonid habitat and population processes.  The research component of these projects is the development of novel monitoring methods, including sampling designs, metrics and indicators, to address specific data and information needs for the management of ESA listed Pacific Northwest salmonid populations.  Specifically, he manages several large research and monitoring programs funded by the Bonneville Power Administration and NOAA-Fisheries in the Wenatchee, John Day and Salmon (ID) River basins that serve as the on-the-ground test beds for design and implementation research. 

David P. Larsen

David P. Larsen (aka Phil) (Larsen.phil@epa.gov) is an aquatic ecologist with the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission after retiring from a long career with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s research laboratory in Corvallis, Oregon.  His research interests have included the application of statistical survey designs for monitoring and evaluating the regional condition of lakes and streams throughout the U.S., recently focusing on salmon-habitat relationships in the Pacific Northwest.  Research has included development of physical, chemical and biological indicators, and relationships among them as well as relationships to their landscape and human disturbance settings.  A significant ongoing interest is understanding how statisticians think and convey that understanding to the monitoring community interested in implementing those ideas.  

Steve Leider

Steve Leider (steve.leider@gsro.wa.gov) is science coordinator with the Washington State Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office, working at the interface of science and policy on issues associated with development and implementation of salmon recovery efforts.  He has been a fish research biologist, resource manager, and science policy analyst with the state for 34 years. As a fish research biologist and coordinator, his work concentrated on understanding the natural production, life history, ecology, and genetics of salmon, steelhead and trout, and the ecological and genetic interactions between hatchery and wild fish, in streams both east and west of the Cascade range.  His recent work has focused on monitoring as a key component of salmon recovery, with attendant challenges that will necessitate unprecedented levels of coordination and collaboration.

Rich Lincoln

Rich Lincoln (rlincoln@wildsalmoncenter.org) is Director of the State of the Salmon, a non-profit program dedicated to improving knowledge about salmon populations and their conservation and management around  the entire the Pacific Rim. His career has been dedicated toward the pursuit of sustainable fisheries management and he has a long history of involvement in salmonid research and assessment programs including freshwater productivity monitoring and evaluation, hatchery supplementation evaluation, and development and application of stock identification techniques to improve salmon fishery management.  The State of the Salmon team focuses their efforts on synthesizing the best current information on key salmon research and management topics and facilitating collaborations among researchers, scientists, managers and conservation interests to promote improvements in management policies and practices. 
See external site

Anthony R. Olsen

Anthony R. Olsen (olsen.tony@epa.gov) is head of the Freshwater Ecology Branch in the Western Ecology Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Corvallis, Oregon.  As an environmental statistician, he specializes in survey design and analysis of large–scale aquatic monitoring studies.  His research focuses on survey design and analysis methodology for sampling natural resources in geographic space.  A particular interest is the development of spatially-balanced survey designs, including computer software to implement survey designs and subsequent statistical analyses of their results.
See external site

Charles Parken

Charles Parken (Chuck.Parken@dfo-mpo.gc.ca) is a salmon habitat assessment biologist for the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (CDFO).  He has designed and implemented fisheries monitoring programs for salmon and steelhead for 15 years.  He has participated in and chaired CDFO’s salmon stock assessment coordinating committee, which plans the salmon stock assessment and fisheries monitoring programs in the Yukon and British Columbia.  His research has focused on developing new, cost-effective techniques to estimate salmon spawner abundance, predictive modeling of salmon habitat capacity and estimation of biological reference points for data poor populations, and improving the quality of scientific advice used for salmon fishery decision making. His recent work involves implementation of the Pacific Salmon Treaty between Canada and the United States and co-chairing committees for Chinook salmon, Sentinel Stocks, and Data Sharing.

Jeff Rodgers

Jeff Rodgers (jeff.rodgers@oregonstate.edu) is Conservation and Recovery Monitoring Coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Corvallis, Oregon.  For last 30 years, he has designed and implemented fish and habitat monitoring and research programs for ODFW in Western Oregon. 

Shaun Walbridge

Shaun Walbridge (walbridge@nceas.ucsb.edu) is a Software Developer and Researcher at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, a research branch of the University of California at Santa Barbara.  He assists working groups with the means to collaborate using software, does research on the impacts of human use of the oceans, and works on developing ecoinformatics software which aims to provide useful software tools to ecologists.