Elwha River Salmon Carcass Addition Experiment Data, 2007-2008

A dataset from an experiment testing the ecological impact of salmon carcass additions in the Elwha River, Washington State, conducted from October 2007 to August 2008. The study measured water chemistry, periphyton, benthic invertebrates, and juvenile rainbow trout response across six side channels before and after carcass placement. Data was collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to examine nutrient dynamics and food web responses.

Use Cases

• Modeling nutrient uptake dynamics based on dissolved inorganic nitrogen and stable isotope measurements mentioned in the description
• Analyzing seasonal variability in benthic algal accrual and invertebrate communities across paired reference and treatment reaches
• Assessing the timing and magnitude of salmon-derived nitrogen incorporation into herbivore and predator taxa using stable isotope data
• Evaluating the effectiveness of marine-derived nutrient subsidies for habitat restoration following dam removal

Strengths

• Data collection spanned multiple seasons from October 2007 to August 2008, capturing temporal dynamics
• Experimental design used six side channels with spatially paired reference and treatment reaches for controlled comparison
• Multiple response metrics were evaluated, including nutrient levels, periphyton, invertebrates, fish, and stable isotope tracing

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Data is provided in PDF format, which may require extraction and structuring for analysis

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Field experiment with sampling in six side channels of the Elwha River, using paired reference and treatment reaches.

Time Range

October 2007 to August 2008

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-14 22:54:10.563888; freshness should be verified

Geography

Elwha River, Washington State, USA