Fiscal Year 2020 Annual Project Report - Questions & Answers

GCRMC Response: Thanks to representatives from the State of Nevada for reviewing our FY2020 Annual 

Report and for following up with your thoughtful questions. Our responses are below in italicized text.

1. Project B, Page 26, Project C, Page 39, Project G, Page 102 – Can you please explain “Higher 

costs in cooperative agreements was due to additional funding to conduct work associated with 

a vacancy at GCMRC and the requirement to GCMRC to move FY2019 funds from an expiring 5-

year agreement between USGS and Reclamation to a new one. As previously planned, funds 

were transferred to the cooperator in FY2020.

GCRMC Response: The previous five-year interagency agreement between USGS and 

Reclamation ended in Sept. 2019 and a new five-year agreement was established. Funding 

provided to USGS, and in turn to its cooperators, under that agreement had to be spent by Sept. 

30, 2019. This created challenges for funding several cooperators with projects that spanned 

these two agreements since approvals required by USGS to fund those agreements were not 

obtained until late in FY2019. The resolution to this problem was to return (deobligate) funds 

from the old agreement originally planned to go to cooperators in FY2019 back to Reclamation 

who then added (obligated) them to USGS under the new agreement. USGS then transferred 

those funds to cooperators in early FY2020. Therefore, the actual amount listed for cooperative 

agreements includes funding planned to go to cooperators from FY2019 and FY2020 planned 

budgets plus the funds from unspent salaries.

2. Project C – Page 35 – Are we going to maintain the genetic patterns of willows in the Grand 

Canyon by only planting willows from Marble Canyon or Grand Canyon?

GCRMC Response: Grand Canyon National Park already has a policy to use restoration stock 

from within the National Park boundary and from areas relatively close to the restoration site, so 

they are already only propagating plants from Marble and Grand Canyons. The data presented 

here give them some options about whether or not they want to use restoration stock from 

Marble Canyon in Grand Canyon or vice versa. Not shown in this report are estimate of genetic 

diversity for each of these sites, as well. We can use the genetic structure data (shown in the 

figure) in combination with genetic diversity estimates to make decisions about maximizing the 

genetic diversity of the site without compromising existing genetic structure.

3. Project E – Page 55 - Is the ecosystem model [converting conceptual model of nutrients and 

temp info into statistical model, ~ stalled in 2019] still underfunded?

GCRMC Response: It is funded at a lower level than requested which means progress will be 

slower than ideal, since we were unable to backfill an analyst position lost in the last workplan. 

However funding is somewhat higher than in the last workplan so we expect to have the time to 

make more progress.

4. Project E – Page 69 - It appears from the pictures of the artificial stream experiment that the 

rocks are clean. Why are they not clean in the river above Lees Ferry?

GCRMC Response: The rocks in the river above Lees Ferry are colonized by a combination of 

diatoms, macroalgae, and bryophytes, which are communities that have developed over many 
years. This colonization has occurred due to a stabilization in the ecosystem, with relatively few 

large disturbance events to reshuffle cobble and disrupt aquatic vegetation growth over time. In 

the mesocosm experiment, we took bare, dry cobble from the banks of the Colorado River and 

used them in experimental tanks, so the type of communities we may see in the field had just 

begun to grow. Nevertheless, we did see algal growth on the rocks in the laboratory, as shown in 

the right-hand photograph on page 67.

5. Project F – Page 82 - Please explain “The lack of anticipated Experimental Funds in FY2020 

constitutes the overall budget shortfall for Project F?” 

GCRMC Response: Field sampling and sample processing was conducted based on a verbal 

agreement between USGS and Reclamation staff to cover associated costs from the 

Experimental Fund. Changes in staffing led to delays in communication of this agreement to 

newer staff which resulted in funds no longer being available to cover these costs.

6. Project G – Page 84 – Is the reason for so few juvenile humpback chub the lack of winter 

flooding? Is this due to the lack of detritus in the LCR? 

GCRMC Response: While the exact mechanism linking winter floods is to recruitment is

unknown, it seems unlikely to be from a lack of detritus since some of the biggest recruitment 

years have occurred when there was minimal flooding. The lack of recruitment in 2018 (a year 

without any winter flooding) contributed to current low numbers, but there have also been a 

number of years with poor recruitment, the cause of which is being studied. The three leading 

hypotheses involve habitat in the LCR, poor condition of spawning adults, and predation by 

nonnatives (primarily catfish) in the LCR.

7. Project G – Page 86 – Why is there low over winter survival rates for LCR humpback chub versus 

Colorado River migrants?

GCRMC Response: Survival seems to be lower in years of extensive winter flooding suggesting 

that cold water floods may pose a challenge to adults however the exact mechanism is unknown.

8. Project G – Page 88 – Why is the survival rates for adults in western Grand Canyon lower than 

the survival rates near the LCR?

GCRMC Response: Unknown, but hopefully something we can learn if JCM – west is continued. It 

was not until we had ~7 years of data in JCM-east that we started to have enough contrast to 

look at environmental drivers.

9. Project G – Page 100 – Is it important for juvenile humpback chub to migrate out of the LCR 

since they did not in 2019-2020? 

GCRMC Response: Individuals that emigrate from the LCR take longer to reach adulthood, but 

contribute to long-term stability in the number of adult chub in the system, on the other hand, 

individuals that stay in the LCR reach adulthood quicker but generally die quicker...if individuals 

never emigrated the systems would fluctuate more dramatically so it is important that 

individuals emigrate in some years.
10. Project G, Page 102 and Project J, Page 135– Can you please explain “Higher costs in cooperative 

agreements was due to the requirement to GCMRC to move FY2019 funds from an expiring 5-

year agreement between USGS and Reclamation to a new one. As previously planned, funds 

were transferred to the cooperator in FY2020.”

GCRMC Response: Please see the response for Project B (Question 1).

11. Project H – Page 122 – Please explain “Higher costs of operating expenses was due to the need 

to shift a cooperative agreement to a service contract which falls in this budgeting category.”

GCRMC Response: We have worked with Ecometric (Dr. Josh Korman) for many years and used 

cooperative agreements to fund that work, but last year the USGS Office of Acquisitions and 

Grants helped us shift to a more appropriate funding mechanism, purchasing services via a 

purchase order. Services covered this way fall under Operating Expenses and not under the

Cooperative Agreement line item, so standard overhead applies rather than the pass-through 

rate. Dr. Korman lowered his costs somewhat as well, however overall costs were not quite what 

we projected. 

12. Project K, Page 138, Project N, Page 156, and Lake Powell Water Quality Monitoring – Please 

explain the funding for the research on Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Lake Powell, it appears it 

was funded by EPA? 

GCRMC Response: EPA had some leftover funding that was used for post doc Sarah Waldo’s trip 

out to Lake Powell. Robert Radtke agreed to support the project in kind, so the fieldwork was 

done as part of a quarterly Lake Powell Water Quality Monitoring trip with participation from 

BOR. 

13. Project M, Page 154 – Please explain “Higher costs in operating expenses due to the 

requirement of USGS to pay contract administrative fees associated with a labor dispute with 

the Department of Labor regarding salary rates in GCMRC’s boat operations contract” and 

“Higher costs for operating expenses were due to needed field staff for several projects being 

provided by contractors instead of USGS employees which are funded through GCMRC’s boat 

operations contract.”

GCRMC Response: The costs related to the labor dispute resulted from employees for our 

previous boat operations contractor filing a complaint with the Department of Labor that they 

were not being paid a fair wage. The claim was investigated, and a determination was reached 

that the claim was valid. The contractor incurred expenses related to the investigation and the 

UGSS Contracting Officer determined that the Government was liable for some of these expenses 

and that they were valid costs under the contract.

GCMRC’s most recent contract to provide boat operators for river operations also includes the 

option to hire science technicians. This has proved to be cost effective by allowing us to hire 

technicians only for the duration of river trips, but has required the shifting of funds from the 

Salary budget category to Operating Expenses where contracts are accounted for.
14. Lake Powell Water Quality Monitoring, Page 158 – Have the results of the salinity retention in 

Lake Powell been shared with the Salinity Control Forum?

GCRMC Response: Yes, lead author Deemer presented this work at the Colorado River Salinity 

Control Forum Science Team meeting on January 24, 2020. 

15. Lake Powell Water Quality Monitoring, Page 163 – Any thoughts on why SRP concentrations are 

elevated 10 m below the penstock depth and the bottom water? 

GCRMC Response: This is likely due to decomposition of sinking plankton in the water column.

16. Lake Powell Water Quality Monitoring, Page 166 - Lake Mead is included in the analysis. Was 

sampling also performed on Lake Mead for GHGs?

GCRMC Response: No GHG sampling was conducted for Lake Mead. We just estimated 

emissions from Lake Mead based on several published global models.