History of the Klamath Falls Field Station
The Klamath Falls Field Station was officially established in 1999 to address fishery issues in the Klamath basin. Our research findings have long been considered authoritative by land use managers and water users in this area and are crucial to future USGS watershed research and modeling in the basin.
Following are excerpts from "Wedemeyer, G.A., 2013, Seventy-five years of science — The U.S. Geological Survey's Western Fisheries
Research Center: U.S. Geological Survey General Information Product 149, 44 p."
Chapter 5 - 1995 to 2003
Klamath Falls Field Station
Water allocation, especially in dry years, in the Klamath River Basin, Oregon, has long been a challenge that had gained national attention in federal and state natural resource planning. In 1988, the Lost River sucker (Deltistes luxatus) and the shortnose sucker (Chasmistes brevirostris) were listed as endangered species and water quality, quantity, and availability (influenced by human use and climate) were identified as major factors limiting their survival. However, the basin’s scarce water resources also were in demand by agriculture, municipalities, and recreationists and unbiased technical information needed by the Bureau of Reclamation, the FWS, and other agencies in the Klamath River Basin was lacking.
WFRC biologists Gary Scoppettone and Mark Coleman (Reno Field Station), and Mike Saiki (Dixon Duty Station) had been monitoring the endangered populations of Lost River and shortnose suckers in Klamath Lake and surrounding tributaries on a part-time basis since the late 1980s. In 1999, WFRC Director Shipley decided it was time to establish a permanent field station at Klamath Falls and selected Rip Shively from the CRRL to direct the new station. In 2001, a FWS Biological Opinion on factors affecting the survival of two threatened sucker species in Upper Klamath Lake made the intensive collection of data on fish behavior, movements, and water quality a lasting requirement. In response, Scott VanderKooi transferred from the CRRL to determine patterns of habitat use and the effects of poor water quality on these populations.
Under the leadership of Rip Shively, many of the projects on the life history, population dynamics, and behavioral ecology of fishes in lentic and lotic habitats within the Klamath Basin were conducted jointly with other federal and state agencies and tribes and the Klamath Falls Field Station soon became the exemplar of research groups conducting such studies.
Chapter 6 - 2003 to 2010
Under the leadership of its first Director, Rip Shively, the Klamath Falls Field Station (KFFS) became part of an interdisciplinary USGS effort to develop new tools that could be used to address science and management needs related to water allocations in the Klamath River Basin. Upon Shively's departure in 2008, Scott VanderKooi was appointed Chief Biologist. VanderKooi continued the development of this and other collaborative approaches among hydrologists, geomorphologists, limnologists, and fisheries biologists. In 2011, VanderKooi, the last of the founding members of the KFFS, took a position with the USGS Southwest Biological Science Center and was succeeded by Eric Janney, the present Chief Biologist. In 2012, the KFFS staff consisted of 14 biologists and support personnel providing needed new insights into lake ecosystem dynamics in the Upper Klamath Basin. Their research findings have long been considered authoritative by land use managers and water users in this area and will be crucial to future USGS watershed research and modeling in the basin. Under Janney’s leadership, and that of KFFS biologists such as Jacob Krause, Summer Burdick, Nathan Banet, and Barbara Martin, the KFFS is well poised to respond to new opportunities associated with the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement such as the prospective removal of four dams on the Klamath River.
