This project draws on long-term monitoring datasets from the Interagency Ecological Program, including existing records of zooplankton, fish, bivalves, and environmental conditions across the Bay-Delta, to understand what drives changes in zooplankton abundance. By pairing zooplankton observations with fish survey data and environmental measurements at matching locations and time periods, statistical modeling will evaluate how factors like flow, salinity, temperature, turbidity, and phytoplankton availability shape zooplankton dynamics, alongside top-down pressure from zooplanktivorous fish and non-native bivalves. These findings will ultimately inform the quantitative models used in water operations planning and decision-making by providing parameter values, such as flow-zooplankton relationships, salinity thresholds, and predation effect sizes, that can calibrate biological response components of hydrodynamic models like DSM2, reducing uncertainty in how ecological endpoints respond to alternative operations scenarios.
This project is a part of the Multidisciplinary Water Training and Operations Program.
Image credit: Daphnia illustration generated using OpenAI ChatGPT (2026).