Blog: Part 2: Who’s who when it comes to baby fish?
A Juvenile Production Estimate (JPE), as we discussed in Part 1 of this essay, is an estimate of the number and timing of outmigrating juvenile spring-run Chinook(opens in new tab) Salmon (“spring run”) as they enter the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It is an important tool for protecting these fish because it helps water managers anticipate when these salmon may be at risk of becoming entrained in water diversions as well as serving as an important check on the status of this population. In this part, I’ll describe the cutting-edge genetic and modeling tools we’re using to distinguish spring run from the other Central Valley Chinook. This series will finish with a final installment full of the quantitative modeling we’re developing to pull in all the salmon and environmental data and actually produce a forecast of juvenile spring-run production.