Coastal Resource Planning within the Klamath River Estuary Task 3 (Spit Assessment): Summary Report

This report constitutes the deliverable for Task 3 ("Assessment of the Klamath Estuary Spit") in the Estuary Technical Group's (ETG's) contract with the Yurok Tribe executed April 18, 2016. The contracts' goal is for ETG to assist the Tribe with coastal resource and climate change adaptation planning for the Klamath River Estuary. The original Scope of Work developed by the Tribe for the contract focused strongly on recommendations for improvements to the "Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model" ("SLAMM") for the Klamath River Estuary.

However, during the kick-off meeting in May 2016, the Tribe expressed its interest in thinking more broadly about ways to approach potential impacts of climate change to the estuary, rather than focusing on SLAMM. In subsequent discussions with the Tribe this was re-emphasized. For example, rather than developing data recommendations specifically to improve SLAMM as described in Task 1 ("Data and Model Review"), it was agreed that the ETG team would deliver broader data recommendations for improving the Tribe's ability to understand potential estuary habitat responses to climate change. These recommendations would constitute a combined deliverable for Tasks 1 and 2 (Task 2: "Data recommendations") which would be delivered after the Tribe's planned Klamath Estuary Workshop to be held in January 2018. As an initial step towards this combined deliverable, the ETG team delivered monitoring recommendations on July 7, 2016. Results of the recommended monitoring would support the Tribe's climate change adaptation planning in several ways: for example, the results could be used to support development of estuary habitat maps and models (including SLAMM if desired), and to improve general understanding of estuary conditions.