Field measurements for characterizing salmon spawning habitat in two restored reaches of the lower Merced River, California

To support an investigation of the effectiveness of a large-scale river restoration project, several types of field data were collected from two gravel-bed reaches of the regulated lower Merced River in California's Central Valley, primarily in the fall of 2016. These data sets were intended to characterize salmon spawning habitat and identify factors influencing spawning site selection. This parent data release includes links to child pages for the following data sets: 1) Bulk samples of streambed sediment used to characterize the subsurface grain size distribution. 2) Pebble counts used to characterize the sediment grain size distribution of the bed surface. 3) Force gage measurements used to parameterize a force balance model for the initation of sediment motion and thus characterize bed mobility. 4) Measurements of saturated hydraulic conductivity used to characterize the permeability of the streambed. 5) Surveys of channel and floodplain topography used to characterize the morphology and parameterize a hydraulic model. 6) Mapped locations of salmon spawning activity used to characterize habitat use. Please refer to the individual child pages for further detail about each data set. Overall, these data were used to evaluate the performance of a large-scale river restoration project on the lower Merced River.