Fraser River sockeye salmon: data synthesis and cumulative impacts

A3.2.1 Integrative quantitative metricsEach contractor (excepting projects #6, 7, 10, and 11) was instructed to provide data for a fewintegrative metrics (or indices) of the stressors that his or her research group examined. Project10 (Peterman and Dorner, 2011) was required to provide data; however, as they were providingthe productivity data of each stock to be used as the response variable (i.e. not a covariate orpotential stressor), the following criteria did not apply to their data submission.It was specified that the metrics provided should adhere to the following guidelines:• Few: Limit submission to 1-5 metrics per contractor. Additional metrics can be addedif justified – i.e., metric represents an important but independent source of variation.• Integrative: Each study will likely have a lot of data. The few integrative metricsprovided to ESSA should synthesize these data. Each contractor is a discipline expertthat will know which variables are most important or how best to integrate data intointegrative metrics.• Independent: Integrative metrics should be chosen to reflect independent sources ofvariation (i.e. not be highly correlated with each other).• Annual: The metrics provided by each contractor need to be provided annually, forthose years where data exist. Each contractor will know the most relevant approach tosummarize intra-annual data into an annual metric (e.g., maximum weekly averagetemperature experienced during upstream migration of each stock of Fraser sockeye).• Stock specific: Provide only one data point per stock per year. The same data pointmay apply to multiple stocks; contractors can specify which ones.Furthermore, each reported metric should be clearly connected with a biologically-supportedhypothesis that emphasizes why this metric is potentially important in explaining patterns insockeye productivity over time and/or space. We also asked contractors to consider where theirhypotheses fit within an initial conceptual model that we provided.Finally, the original data sources and analytical methods would need to be explicitly described tocommunicate how each integrative metric was generated. The leaders of each project areexpected to be the experts on how to best integrate stressor-specific data over space and time, butall users (intermediate and final) must be able trace the steps by which an integrative metric wasgenerated from its primary sources. The data template therefore asked each contractor to providemetadata, describing all primary sources and assumptions used to derive the integrative metric.166