February 12, 2007

To: Mike Healey, Jeff Mount, Bill Bennett, Mark Stacey, Jon Burau

Thank you, again, for taking a day from your busy schedules to listen to

presentations about the CASCADE project and offer guidance during our
meeting on

January 29. We owe you a response, so here is a synopsis of the key
messages we heard

and how we will respond.

**Outreach/Collaboration/Marketing:**

Mike and Jeff both noted an apparent insularity of CASCADE and
emphasized

the importance of 'selling' the program and building collaborations with
potential

consumers of CASCADE products. We agree that communication and
coordination are

important and, like all scientists, we struggle to find the right
balance between time

devoted to outreach and research. We are committed to outreach and
openness of

CASCADE, and offer a few examples to illustrate steps we've taken --

• Our first step was a February 2003 public meeting held in Sacramento
to

announce our intentions of developing a long view of the Delta and
request

guidance from interested stakeholders. We invited representatives from
USBR,

DWR, DFG, CALFED, MWD, Contra Costa Water District and the Nature

Conservancy whose public comments shaped the ultimate design of CASCADE.

• We maintain a publicly accessible website
(http://sfbay.wr.usgs.gov/cascade/) that archives progress reports and
will be used to disseminate products. Already we

have responded to inquiries from: Campbell Ingram \-- Program Manager of
the

California Water Initiative; Rudolph Rosen \-- Director, Western
Regional Office

of Ducks Unlimited, Inc.; John Callaway \-- Department of Environmental

Science, University of San Francisco; Robert Twiss and others
commissioned by

the CALFED Science Program to lay a foundation for a Delta Vision
Process.

• Cloern, Monsen and Knowles gave a CASCADE briefing to Joe Grindstaff
and

his Science Program staff in October 2006.

• We are working in partnership with other agencies, e.g.: Nancy Monsen
is liason

between CASCADE and DRMS; Noah Knowles works with DWR staff to implement
CALSIM modeling into his hydrologic projections and with USBR staff in
applications of their models of reservoir temperatures; Larry Brown is
coordinating our development of salinity-temperature models with IEP-POD
researchers; Dan Cayan and Mike Dettinger work with the California
Energy Commission and other State agencies to evaluate and assess
potential impacts of climate change in the State, including the
Bay/Delta region; Dettinger is working with Ron Ott on arrangements to
become the CALFED Science Program's climate-science advisor; Cayan
and/or Dettinger will serve on DWR's Climate-Change Technical Advisory
Group for the next Water Plan Update.

• Noah Knowles, Dan Cayan and other CASCADE researchers will be
highlighted in an upcoming segment of the KQED radio broadcast series
*The California*

*Report*.

• We have accepted an invitation from the organizing committee to give a

presentation about CASCADE at the October 2007 State of the Estuary

Conference in San Francisco and we will accept Mike Healey's invitation
to

organize a dedicated session at the 2009 CALFED Science Conference

• Knowles, Dettinger and Cayan presented CASCADE-supported results
regarding flooding, Bay inundation, and sea level rise at the 2006
CALFED Science Conference.

• CASCADE membership has already grown with the addition of Christa
Woodley whose postdoctoral research at the UCD Watershed Center will be
supported with a CALFED Fellowship; title of her project: \"The Impacts
of Global Climate

Change on Delta Fishes: Predicting Fish Abundance, Distribution and
Community

Changes\". Larry Brown is community mentor and Peter Moyle and Bill
Bennett

are her research mentors.

• Dettinger discussed new criteria for selecting the most informative
climate change scenarios for various impact assessments at last spring's
California Water

and Environmental Modeling Forum.

• We will continue our tradition of publishing findings for general
audiences, such

as the Science in Action Series -- e.g. the article *Puzzling Over the
Shallows*

(http://science.calwater.ca.gov/pdf/SIA_shallows_120101.pdf) based on
our

previous CALFED-supported research in the Delta. In this tradition we
will be

happy to contribute to a *State of the Delta Report*.

We may not attain Jeff Mount's marketing standard, but we agree that
outreach,

communication through multiple outlets, transparency, and collaboration
with other

agencies are essential for success with CASCADE. We will always be open
to your

specific suggestions about how we can perform better in our sales
mission.

**Coordination with the CALFED-Science Program:**

We heard from Mike Healey that he would like to see direct ties to
CALFED

through, for example, fuller examination of scenarios, development of
conceptual models

as a basis for adaptive management, guidance about new measurements
required to

validate models, and attraction of other agencies to work as part of
CASCADE. We

propose that progress toward these ends might be facilitated with a
direct liason between

our project and the Science Program, and we suggest that Michelle
Schouse could serve

effectively in that role. We welcome her to our team meetings so she can
both represent

CASCADE to the Science Program and provide guidance from the Science
Program as

new issues arise. Mike -- would you consider this proposal to establish
a direct link to

your office? Of course, all of you are welcome to our PI meetings.

**Technical Guidance**:

• We heard from Jeff Mount his strong advice that we should be modeling

suspended sediments dynamically because of their importance in
regulation of

phytoplankton growth rates.

• We heard from Jon Burau about the pressing need for incorporation of

phytoplankton dynamics into Delta models -- demand for this capability
exists

now across multiple fronts.

• We heard from Mark and Jeff similar comments about the structure of
CASCADE that doesn't emphasize feedbacks or processes (we focus on
'boxes' rather than the arrows connecting them and focus on the flow of
information in one

direction).

• We heard from Jon his suggestions about how outputs from DeltaTRIM can
be

used to build integrative indices of changing hydrodynamics, such as the
ratio of

tidal to river-driven transports or changes in flow through the
freshwater corridor

under various scenarios.

• We heard from Mike the question about how CASCADE outputs will be

organized across different scales of spatial and temporal variability.

These comments will be considered in future PI meetings as CASCADE-I
progresses and

we begin to conceptualize CASCADE-II.

For the team, we thank you.

Jim Cloern