Burnett at al. 2007

Burnett, K. M., and coauthors. 2007. Data and modeling tools for assessing landscape-level influences on salmonid populations: Examples from western Oregon. Pages (in press) in C. Krueger, and C. Zimmerman, editors. Sustainability of the Artic-Yukon-Kuskokwim Salmon Fisheries. Alaska Sea Grant, Anchorage, Alaska.

The Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim Sustainable Salmon Initiative (AYK SSI) is an innovative partnership between public and private institutions which provides a
forum for non-governmental organizations and state and federal agencies to cooperatively identify and address salmon research and restoration needs. The affected
region encompasses over 40% of the State of Alaska; the AYK region includes the watersheds of the Norton
Sound region up to and including the village of Shishmaref, the Yukon River Watershed within Alaska, and the Kuskokwim River Watershed (including the coastal watersheds north of Cape Newenham), plus the Bering Sea marine ecosystem. The AYK SSI is a response to disastrously low salmon returns to western Alaska in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which created numerous hardships for the people and communities that depend heavily on the salmon fishery. Some stocks in the region have been in a decline for more than a decade and a half, leading to severe restrictions on commercial and subsistence fisheries. The first step for the AYK SSI has been to collaboratively develop and implement a comprehensive research plan to understand the causes of the declines and recoveries of AYK salmon. Created via a memorandum of understanding (www.aykssi.org), the AYK SSI partnership includes the Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP); the
Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC); Kawerak, Inc.; Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association (BSFA); Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G); National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS); US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS); plus additional native, governmental, and NGO ex-officio partner institutions. In 2001, the partners
established the AYK Sustainable Salmon Initiative (AYK SSI) and created a process and structure to ensure the coordinated expenditure of research funds. The AYK SSI is governed by an eight-member Steering Committee (SC) and advised by a six-member Scientific and Technical Committee (STC). Congress has appropriated $20.5 million as of June 2006 to support the AYK SSI. The kinds of information and the means of collecting it are defined by the diverse nature of the SC’s membership. In addition to studying the biology and physics of salmon production, the SC is concerned with how humans impact salmon and with the evaluation and
development of tools to be applied to managing human impacts on the fishery and ecosystem. As understanding salmon and their movements through the AYK
ecosystems has been a preoccupation of local inhabitants for millennia, the SC’s studies will rely on local residents as much as possible to provide necessary
information and to identify avenues of inquiry to achieve the Program goal. To acquire the information necessary to sustainably manage salmon, the SC is also interested in assisting in building the infrastructure and personnel capacity to support salmon research and restoration in local communities. The Research and Restoration Plan (RRP) was prepared by the STC, with guidance from a committee of the U.S. National Research Council (NRC 2004a), for the SC and
its constituencies, which include resource-dependent communities in the region, researchers, resource managers, directors of research programs, and other decision makers throughout the range of the AYK salmon. It also serves to inform authors of proposals to the AYK SSI for funding and serves the STC in its
evaluation of proposals. The RRP explains what needs to be done, why and when it needs to be done, and how it can be accomplished. The RRP’s conceptual foundation establishes why and when research and restoration actions are necessary by explaining the current understanding of the most important variables responsible for production of AYK salmon. What needs to be done is determined by answering critical questions surrounding the trends and causes of variation in salmon abundance and human use of salmon.