Chena River Chinook Salmon Study

Back on August 2nd, Sam Decker did a helicopter flyover on the Chena to count and map adult Chinook salmon redds. I rode along to take photos of the spawning sites (and other interesting features) from the air. Because I synced the camera’s clock with the clock on my GPS, a little post-processing enabled me to place all the pictures precisely on a map. You can browse the interactive map at Flickr.

Here are some highlights. Notice the spawning Chinook on their redds in the top/middle picture, and the large woody debris piles in the pictures on the right, which seem to be especially important habitat for juvenile Chinook.

We’re using these photos right now, along with plentiful GIS data about fish abundance, to narrow down our potential study reaches for this summer.