1)    Build partnerships and define goals – Engage local stakeholders and agencies to identify common stewardship interests. The Klamath Basin Monitoring Program is comprised of over 25 water quality monitoring organizations working together to improve water quality conditions in the Klamath River Basin. 

2)    Characterize Watershed – Through the collaborative monitoring framework, a holistic understanding of ecosystem function in the Klamath River Basin are generated.

3)    Identify Problems and Develop Solutions – Based on the status and trend results from the collaborative monitoring framework, sources of water quality impairment can be identified. KBMP members develop hypotheses, models, and alternatives in an effort to identify solutions to water quality impairment.

4)    Implement Solutions - Non-regulatory and directs actions may be taken to address the sources of impairment.

5)    Measure and Evaluate Progress –Watershed Stewardship Reports by sub-basin will be living documents which will help develop and communicate metrics to assess progress, such as in-stream temperature, fish passage, and / or riparian shade. 

6)    Make Adjustments – Following assessment ecosystem function, stewardship approaches are evaluated and refined to better address the sources of water quality impairment. Steps 3 through step 6 will be repeated until  forward progress toward ecosystem rehabilitation is made.

Example stewardship brochure - Shasta Basin 

How it fits in with recovery and restoration efforts

The Shasta River Watershed Stewardship Report is a non‐regulatory document that identifies successful stewardship actions and presents a roadmap for future stewardship actions to continue to improve water quality conditions in the Shasta River watershed. The Shasta River Watershed Stewardship Report is intended to introduce a watershed‐scale, stewardship‐based, adaptive management approach with opportunities for direct and interactive feedback from local stakeholders and partner organizations. In general, the stewardship approach can be summarized as a collaborative framework to improve water quality that supports beneficial uses and habitat for sensitive species, such as coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch).

This report is a pilot project of the Klamath Basin Monitoring Program (KBMP) intended to promote the use of science‐based assessment to guide water quality improvement activities and projects. The Shasta Valley Resource Conservation District (SVRCD) has coordinated partnerships with local landowners, local agencies, state and federal agencies, tribes, and other non‐governmental organizations for the development of this report and to begin the development of a watershed stewardship framework. The watershed stewardship framework is based on partnerships coalesced around shared environmental outcomes, respect for the working landscape, and a voluntary commitment to collaboration. An anticipated benefit of the proposed watershed stewardship approach includes increased sharing of information on actions and projects completed by participants to track the progress made in the Shasta River watershed. Another benefit of this watershed stewardship coordination report is the increased level of identifying the shared funding by participants on mutually beneficial projects. This is the first watershed stewardship report and it is intended to be a living document, building on hard work accomplished by partners across the watershed, guiding adaptive management as conditions change. The report will live on the KBMP website and will be updated as watershed stewardship accomplishments and assessments are completed.

In addition to the stewardship action updates, the Shasta River Watershed Stewardship Report identifies current water quality monitoring taking place and identifies water quality trends as they relate to sensitive beneficial uses. As part of the Stewardship Program, the scope of the Shasta River Watershed Water Quality Monitoring Plan has been expanded to provide a collaborative opportunity for all partner programs currently conducting water quality monitoring in the Shasta River Watershed. Rather than being a single‐purpose monitoring plan, this plan utilizes an integrated multi‐organizational approach to water quality monitoring. By leveraging water quality monitoring at a broad spatial scale, this monitoring plan provides a more holistic and up‐to‐date understanding of water quality conditions and presents a collaborative opportunity for identifying solutions to water quality impairments. The watershed stewardship approach is based on a science‐based assessment of conditions to inform stewardship activities, and builds on partnerships and local collaboration.

Shasta Valley Historical Ecology Document

Six key stewardship actions were identified for the Shasta River Watershed including:

• Riparian fencing
• Tailwater management
• Fish barrier removal
• Riparian planting
• Flow augmentation
• Spring restoration

Through April 2018, consistent progress has been made to implement key stewardship actions. This includes the installation of 24 stockwater systems, 8 irrigation efficiency projects, 6 projects that re‐use tailwater return flow, and 3,750 linear feet of riparian plantings. Approximately 133 miles of riparian fencing have been installed since the adoption of the Shasta TMDL Action Plan, protecting 91% of the mainstem of the Shasta River, 60% of the Little Shasta River, 49% of Parks Creek, 60% of Yreka Creek, and a cumulative 61% of the entire stream reach length of the Shasta River system. Additionally, 23 ranches have received assistance with ranch planning which includes assessing water quality impacts. Information regarding the ranch planning process and approach utilized by the Shasta Valley RCD can be found here. Since 2006, over $11 million in grants have been awarded to SVRCD to complete these projects and to support ongoing stewardship efforts within the watershed to implement the Action Plan. These funds were largely from federal and state agencies but also from private organizations. Much work has also been done by both private land owners and non‐governmental organizations.

 Shasta River Water Association Flashboard Dam fish passage improvement project implemented in 2008, shown in pre-project and post construction photos.

There is evidence that managing tailwater inputs and encouraging riparian vegetation growth has beneficial effects on both temperature and dissolved oxygen. Big Springs Creek received significant changes to management practices following purchase by the Nature Conservancy to encourage recovery of riparian and emergent aquatic vegetation and a general reduction of the amount of cold water diverted from Big Springs Creek. Big Springs Creek is the only monitoring site where temperature shows a significant decreasing trend, providing evidence that these management practices have been successful. However, the presence of a stronger trend in the late summer than through early summer or whole summer indicates early summer heat loading when emergent riparian vegetation is not fully established. The data also indicates that flow could have an influence on temperature, with lower flow years showing notable increases in MDMTs and average daily maximum water temperatures across the watershed.

 
Shasta River in Reach 6 during construction of riparian fencing (2011) and later in 2015. 

Dissolved oxygen data showed a compelling long‐term trend of improvement in days where the daily minimum dissolved oxygen concentrations failed to meet the basin plan objective at the Montague‐ Grenada Bridge. This is an area where a large number of tailwater management and irrigation efficiency projects have been conducted, and those activities likely play a key role in the observed reduction. It is possible that the improvement seen is a function of the size and scope of these projects relative to the scale of tailwater impacts influencing the Shasta River at that location. The spatial variability in 2016 dissolved oxygen concentrations shows that the oxygen balance in the Shasta River is complex and the dominant source of oxygen consuming material is not known with certainty.

Several watershed stewardship report reviewers commented that a higher priority needs to be placed on water quality improvement and restoration projects that focus on improving flow and temperature conditions in the Shasta River. Tailwater return flow projects that have been completed were undertaken with the intent to both reduce non‐point source pollutants (e.g., sediment, organic matter, temperature) and increase flows. These tailwater return flow projects have not always met their flow improvement objectives. However, through our adaptive management analysis, we believe that changes can be made in future project design and implementation that can increase their potential to improve low conditions. In addition, several spring restoration projects are under consideration that could also contribute to putting more cold water into the river.

Following the analysis of the data collected to date, the following management questions are apparent:

• What management measures can be applied to improve early summer temperatures before emergent vegetation has set in?
• Which processes dominate dissolved oxygen conditions at different reaches of the Shasta River?
• Do former dam sites still contribute significantly to sediment oxygen demand, and if so, how long will those impacts persist in the water column?
• How has dissolved oxygen demand from various sources changed since the adoption of the Shasta River TMDL Action Plan?
• How does this compare to the Water Quality Compliance Conditions described in the Action Plan?
• How can management measures be applied commensurate to the scale of site‐specific tailwater influence to ensure efficient and effective mitigation?
• How can tailwater projects be designed to assure that net flow instream is not reduced as a result of the project?

The following restoration actions and monitoring activities are recommended to answer these questions:

• Continue to implement riparian protection strategies, spring reconnection and rehabilitation, and tailwater management projects.
• Work to remove the remaining flashboard dams on the mainstem Shasta, as well as tributaries.
• Continue ongoing dissolved oxygen and temperature monitoring as well as photo documentation. Continuous monitoring of water quality conditions is crucial to understanding which restoration actions are successful, efficient, and suitable to site‐specific conditions.
• Additionally, ongoing analysis of water quality and restoration data is crucial to guiding TMDL action plan implementation and understanding the dynamics and trends of the overall system.
• Ensure projects are implemented with appropriate pre‐ and post‐implementation monitoring to assess the effectiveness of projects at addressing the scale of impacts.
• Improvements in data collection and study can be made by collecting meteorological data and other important data at locations in close proximity to the waterbodies of interest to understand dominant drivers of water temperature loading. This includes at least ambient air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, and wind speed. These added parameters would prove more representative of conditions adjacent to the Shasta River and its tributaries than existing CDEC weather stations, while also providing boundary conditions for water temperature modeling efforts.
• An updated comprehensive temperature modelling study may prove the most effective. 

Seasonality record of daily maximum water temperatures for Shasta Watershed, 1994-2015.