From: streamkeepers

Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 5:11 PM

To: Streamkeeper advisors

Subject: Please advise on Streamkeepers' physical-habitat sampling

Dear Streamkeepers advisors:

Once again we need your input! Just as you helped advise us on revision of our water-chem/flow and fecal sampling plans, now we need advice about our physical-habitat (P-hab) sampling plan.

Briefly, we're thinking of abandoning our current P-hab monitoring system, for reasons described in the attached memo. Ultimately we'd have to figure out what to replace it with, but here are the issues we need to answer by mid-June:

1. Should we continue measuring our current set of P-hab parameters this summer, even if there’s a good chance we’ll be changing systems next year? (Or should we measure them at new sites where we haven’t measured P-hab before?)

2. Should we explore alternative P-hab monitoring systems (between now and next summer), and if so, which ones?

Then there's a third question, if the answer to #1 is no:

3. If we don’t monitor P-hab this summer, should we add an additional water-chem/flow monitoring session in July to the ones we already do in August and in mid-Sept—mid-Oct? (The rationale would be that the volunteers would have less work to do, and the time saved by not monitoring P-hab could be spent doing additional water quality monitoring in July, which in some cases might be a critical water-quality month.)

A detailed briefing paper is attached. We estimate that it will take about an hour to read it and comment. If you can find that hour between now and June 17, we'd really appreciate it!

Thanks, Ed & Hannah