Dalton Hance
Fisheries data does not speak for itself – no matter the size, detail, complexity, or expense at which it was collected. My research is focused on improving and applying statistical methods that maximize the value of existing data or of planned studies for assessing fish movement and survival, and the relationships of these demographic parameters to management levers.
I work at the Columbia River Research Laboratory as a Research Statistician within the Quantitative Fisheries Ecology Section. Currently, my work is focused on Snake River Fall Chinook salmon and Chinook salmon in the Sacramento – San Joaquin system. My graduate work investigated seasonal movement of Oregon Coast Coho Salmon by accounting for imperfect detection of tagged individuals. Prior to working with USGS, I conducted statistical analysis of environmental contaminants in fish, sediment, and water in various locations throughout the United States.
Research Interests:
My main research interest is in developing and applying mark-recapture models to fisheries data. Simple mark-recapture models have been used for decades to inform management data in the Columbia River and other basins. However, many existing methods do not take full advantage of the wealth of data offered by telemetry data. For example, analysts commonly ignore the temporal dimension of these data by either aggregating fish released or detected over several days or weeks into an artificial “single-release”, often this entails discarding data (e.g. fish released or detected outside of an arbitrary timeframe). I am interested in developing and expanding process-based statistical models that account for this temporal variation and make more efficient use of the available data while also providing more informative results that can address operational and environmental conditions at a timescale that is relevant to management (e.g. daily).
Professional Experience
2016 to Present – Statistician, U.S. Geological Survey, Western Fisheries Research Center, Columbia River Research Laboratory, Cook, WA
2014 – 2016 – Environmental Scientist, Anchor QEA, Wenatchee, WA
2010 – 2014 – Graduate Research Assistant, College of Forestry, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
2007 – 2010 – Clinical Research Coordinator, Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Education and Certifications
M.Sc. 2014 – Statistics, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
M.Sc. 2013 – Forest Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
B.Sc./B.A. 2006 – Mathematics/English, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA
Science and Products
Assessing the efficacy of using a parentage-based tagging survival model to evaluate two sources of mortality for juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in Lookout Point Reservoir, Oregon
We conducted a study to assess the efficacy of using a parentage-based tagging survival model (PBT N-mixture model) to evaluate two sources of mortality for juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in Lookout Point Reservoir, Oregon. The model was originally developed to evaluate reservoir mortality because of predation from piscivorous fish. However, recent studies have also found that
Authors
Dalton J. Hance, Tobias J. Kock, Russell W. Perry, Adam C. Pope
From drought to deluge: Spatiotemporal variation in migration routing, survival, travel time and floodplain use of an endangered migratory fish
We developed a novel statistical model to relate the daily survival and migration dynamics of an endangered anadromous fish to river flow and water temperature during both extreme drought and severe flooding in an intensively managed river system. Our Bayesian temporally stratified multistate mark recapture model integrates over unobserved travel times and route transitions to efficiently estimate
Authors
Dalton Hance, Russell Perry, Adam Pope, Arnold J. Ammann, Jason L. Hassrick, Gabriel S. Hansen
Research, monitoring, and evaluation of emerging issues and measures to recover the Snake River Fall Chinook salmon ESU
The portion of the Snake River fall Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha evolutionary significant unit (ESU) that spawns upstream of Lower Granite Dam transitioned from low to high abundance during 1992–2020 in response to U.S. Endangered Species Act recovery efforts and other federally mandated actions. This annual report focuses on changes in population abundance and habitat use by natural- a
Authors
Kenneth Tiffan, Peter H. Barry, Dalton Hance, John Plumb, Brad Bickford, Tobyn Rhodes, Kenneth G. King, Dalton Dirk Lebeda, Rulon J. Hemingway, John Hargrove
Identifying resting locations of a small elusive forest carnivore using a two-stage model accounting for GPS measurement error and hidden behavioral states
Studies of animal movement using location data are often faced with two challenges. First, time series of animal locations are likely to arise from multiple behavioral states (e.g., directed movement, resting) that cannot be observed directly. Second, location data can be affected by measurement error, including failed location fixes. Simultaneously addressing both problems in a single statistical
Authors
Dalton Hance, Katie M. Moriarty, Bruce A. Hollen, Russell Perry
Juvenile Chinook salmon survival, travel time, and floodplain use relative to riverine channels in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta
Floodplains provide multiple benefits to both resident and migratory fish species, including juvenile Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, but direct comparisons of survival during migration through a floodplain versus riverine routes are scarce. The Yolo Bypass is a broad floodplain of the Sacramento River that floods in about 30% of years in response to large, uncontrolled runoff events. We
Authors
Adam Pope, Russell Perry, Brett N. Harvey, Dalton Hance, Hal C Hansel
Combining models of the critical streakline and the cross-sectional distribution of juvenile salmon to predict fish routing at river junctions
Because fish that enter the interior Delta have poorer survival than those emigrating via the Sacramento River, understanding the mechanisms that drive entrainment rates at side channel junctions is critically important for the management of imperiled juvenile salmon. Here, we implement a previously proposed process-based conceptual model to study entrainment rates based on three linked elements:
Authors
Dalton Hance, Russell Perry, Jon R. Burau, Aaron R. Blake, Paul Stumpner, Xiaochun Wang, Adam Pope
A temporally stratified extension of space‐for‐time Cormack–Jolly–Seber for migratory animals
Understanding drivers of temporal variation in demographic parameters is a central goal of mark‐recapture analysis. To estimate the survival of migrating animal populations in migration corridors, space‐for‐time mark–recapture models employ discrete sampling locations in space to monitor marked populations as they move past monitoring sites, rather than the standard practice of using fixed samplin
Authors
Dalton J. Hance, Russell Perry, John Plumb, Adam Pope
Research, monitoring, and evaluation of emerging issues and measures to recover the Snake River fall Chinook Salmon ESU
The portion of the Snake River fall Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ESU that spawns upstream of Lower Granite Dam transitioned from low to high abundance during 1992–2018 in association with U.S. Endangered Species Act recovery efforts and other federally mandated actions. This annual report focuses on (1) numeric and habitat use responses by natural- and hatchery-origin spawners, (2) phen
Authors
Kenneth Tiffan, Russell Perry, John Plumb, Dalton Hance, Brad Bickford, Tobyn Rhodes
Survival, travel time, and utilization of Yolo Bypass, California, by outmigrating acoustic-tagged late-fall Chinook salmon
Juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) migrating through California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta toward the Pacific Ocean face numerous challenges to their survival. The Yolo Bypass is a broad floodplain of the Sacramento River that floods in about 70 percent of years in response to large, uncontrolled runoff events. As one of the routes juvenile salmon may utilize, the Yolo By
Authors
Adam C. Pope, Russell W. Perry, Dalton J. Hance, Hal C. Hansel
Science and Products
Assessing the efficacy of using a parentage-based tagging survival model to evaluate two sources of mortality for juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in Lookout Point Reservoir, Oregon
We conducted a study to assess the efficacy of using a parentage-based tagging survival model (PBT N-mixture model) to evaluate two sources of mortality for juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in Lookout Point Reservoir, Oregon. The model was originally developed to evaluate reservoir mortality because of predation from piscivorous fish. However, recent studies have also found that
Authors
Dalton J. Hance, Tobias J. Kock, Russell W. Perry, Adam C. Pope
From drought to deluge: Spatiotemporal variation in migration routing, survival, travel time and floodplain use of an endangered migratory fish
We developed a novel statistical model to relate the daily survival and migration dynamics of an endangered anadromous fish to river flow and water temperature during both extreme drought and severe flooding in an intensively managed river system. Our Bayesian temporally stratified multistate mark recapture model integrates over unobserved travel times and route transitions to efficiently estimate
Authors
Dalton Hance, Russell Perry, Adam Pope, Arnold J. Ammann, Jason L. Hassrick, Gabriel S. Hansen
Research, monitoring, and evaluation of emerging issues and measures to recover the Snake River Fall Chinook salmon ESU
The portion of the Snake River fall Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha evolutionary significant unit (ESU) that spawns upstream of Lower Granite Dam transitioned from low to high abundance during 1992–2020 in response to U.S. Endangered Species Act recovery efforts and other federally mandated actions. This annual report focuses on changes in population abundance and habitat use by natural- a
Authors
Kenneth Tiffan, Peter H. Barry, Dalton Hance, John Plumb, Brad Bickford, Tobyn Rhodes, Kenneth G. King, Dalton Dirk Lebeda, Rulon J. Hemingway, John Hargrove
Identifying resting locations of a small elusive forest carnivore using a two-stage model accounting for GPS measurement error and hidden behavioral states
Studies of animal movement using location data are often faced with two challenges. First, time series of animal locations are likely to arise from multiple behavioral states (e.g., directed movement, resting) that cannot be observed directly. Second, location data can be affected by measurement error, including failed location fixes. Simultaneously addressing both problems in a single statistical
Authors
Dalton Hance, Katie M. Moriarty, Bruce A. Hollen, Russell Perry
Juvenile Chinook salmon survival, travel time, and floodplain use relative to riverine channels in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta
Floodplains provide multiple benefits to both resident and migratory fish species, including juvenile Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, but direct comparisons of survival during migration through a floodplain versus riverine routes are scarce. The Yolo Bypass is a broad floodplain of the Sacramento River that floods in about 30% of years in response to large, uncontrolled runoff events. We
Authors
Adam Pope, Russell Perry, Brett N. Harvey, Dalton Hance, Hal C Hansel
Combining models of the critical streakline and the cross-sectional distribution of juvenile salmon to predict fish routing at river junctions
Because fish that enter the interior Delta have poorer survival than those emigrating via the Sacramento River, understanding the mechanisms that drive entrainment rates at side channel junctions is critically important for the management of imperiled juvenile salmon. Here, we implement a previously proposed process-based conceptual model to study entrainment rates based on three linked elements:
Authors
Dalton Hance, Russell Perry, Jon R. Burau, Aaron R. Blake, Paul Stumpner, Xiaochun Wang, Adam Pope
A temporally stratified extension of space‐for‐time Cormack–Jolly–Seber for migratory animals
Understanding drivers of temporal variation in demographic parameters is a central goal of mark‐recapture analysis. To estimate the survival of migrating animal populations in migration corridors, space‐for‐time mark–recapture models employ discrete sampling locations in space to monitor marked populations as they move past monitoring sites, rather than the standard practice of using fixed samplin
Authors
Dalton J. Hance, Russell Perry, John Plumb, Adam Pope
Research, monitoring, and evaluation of emerging issues and measures to recover the Snake River fall Chinook Salmon ESU
The portion of the Snake River fall Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ESU that spawns upstream of Lower Granite Dam transitioned from low to high abundance during 1992–2018 in association with U.S. Endangered Species Act recovery efforts and other federally mandated actions. This annual report focuses on (1) numeric and habitat use responses by natural- and hatchery-origin spawners, (2) phen
Authors
Kenneth Tiffan, Russell Perry, John Plumb, Dalton Hance, Brad Bickford, Tobyn Rhodes
Survival, travel time, and utilization of Yolo Bypass, California, by outmigrating acoustic-tagged late-fall Chinook salmon
Juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) migrating through California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta toward the Pacific Ocean face numerous challenges to their survival. The Yolo Bypass is a broad floodplain of the Sacramento River that floods in about 70 percent of years in response to large, uncontrolled runoff events. As one of the routes juvenile salmon may utilize, the Yolo By
Authors
Adam C. Pope, Russell W. Perry, Dalton J. Hance, Hal C. Hansel