Annual IEP Workshop

The 2026 Annual IEP Workshop was held at the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) headquarters building (715 P Street, Sacramento) from March 16-18, 2026.

Workshop materials:

• 2026 Annual Workshop Program (PDF)
• 2026 Annual Workshop Abstract Booklet (PDF)
• 2026 Posters

Congratulations to the award winners of the Best Early Career Oral Presentations and the Best Early Career Poster Presentations.

• Elsie Platzer (U.C. Davis) - Quantifying Primary Production in the San Francisco Estuary's Tidal Wetlands (Session 15: Wetland Habitats)
• Kimberly Evans (U.C. Davis) - Into the Sloughs of Suisun: The 2025 Annual Trends in Species Composition and Abiotic Variables (Session 15: Wetland Habitats)
• Nicholas Framsted (U.S. Geological Survey) - Assessing Drivers of Phytoplankton Blooms in the South Delta (Session 17: Phytoplankton, Algae, or Harmful Algal Blooms)

• Pachia Lee (California Department of Water Resources) - Cold, Quick, and CRISPR-Clear: Freezing SHERLOCK for Faster Genetic Detection
• Lalayna Hablutzel (California Department of Fish and Wildlife) - Phenology of Longfin Smelt (Spirinchus thaleichthys)
• Andres Mendoza (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) - Catch Me If You Can: An Exploration of Species-Specific Net Avoidance for Kodiak Trawl Efforts (poster not available on the poster exhibit page)

Recordings of the 3-day workshop are housed under the IEP Master List on the CDFW YouTube Playlists Channel.
The Poetry Slam was not recorded. We don't have a recording of Levi Lewis's (UC Davis) rap "Purple Fish in Flow" but he did provide the lyrics. See "Purple Fish in Flow" (PDF).

The 2025 Annual IEP Workshop was held at the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) headquarters building (715 P Street, Sacramento) from March 4 - 6, 2025. Below are materials from the workshop.

• 2025 Annual Workshop Program (PDF)
• 2025 Annual Workshop Abstracts Booklet (PDF)
• 2025 Posters

Congratulations to the award winners of the Best Early Career Talk and the Best Early Career Poster.

• Sienna White (U.C. Berkeley) - Vertical Mixing in Dead-End Channels of the Delta (Session 14: Phytoplankton and HABs Part II)
• Kim Luke (Delta Stewardship Council) - Science Action Agenda Progress Summary (Session 12: Management and Policy)
• Delia Carpenter (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) - Recovering High-Frequency Plankton Dynamics from Low-Frequency Samples (Session 8: Fish Modeling)

• Brandy Smith (CA Department of Water Resources) - Creating and reconnecting floodplain habitat in the Yolo Bypass: an Overview of DWR restoration projects
• Katie Hostetler (CA Department of Fish and Wildlife) - Evaluating Image-Based Deep Learning Methods for Zooplankton Sample Processing
• Emma Freedman (CA Department of Water Resources) - Old Clips, New Tricks: Dry Fin-Clip Preservation for High Throughput Genetic Processing

The 2024 Annual IEP Workshop took place at the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) headquarters building (715 P Street, Sacramento) from April 23-25. Below are materials from the workshop:

• 2024 Annual Workshop Program (pdf)
• 2024 Annual Workshop Abstracts Booklet (pdf)
• 2024 Posters
• IEP Data Training Course Flyer (pdf) and Agenda with Bios (pdf)

Recordings of the Data Management Training Course and the 3-day IEP Workshop will be housed on the CDFW YouTube channel under the IEP Playlist.

The 2023 Annual IEP Workshop took place at the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) Headquarters building (715 P Street, Sacramento, CA) from March 21-24. Below are materials from the workshop:

• 2023 Annual Workshop Program (PDF)
• 2023 Annual Workshop Presentation Abstract Booklet (PDF)
• 2023 Annual Workshop Poster Abstract Booklet (PDF)
• 2023 Poster Forum (view posters)
• IEP Training Course Materials
  • Introduction to GIS with QGIS Course Description (PDF)
  • Introduction to Hierarchical Models in R with Application to Abundance Modeling Course Description (PDF)

Recordings of the 3-day IEP Workshop are housed on the CDFW YouTube channel under the IEP Workshops 2023 Playlist (videos).

The 2022 IEP Annual Workshop took place as a virtual Zoom Webinar event that was held from March 22 - 24.

• 2022 Workshop Program (PDF)
• 2022 Workshop Presentation Abstract Booklet (PDF)
• 2022 Workshop Poster Abstract Booklet (PDF)
• 2022 Mentor Bios (PDF)
• Statistics R Micro-Training Materials for Sessions V, VI, and VII (GitHub site)

The workshop was recorded and the session videos were posted on YouTube for viewing until June 30, 2022.

The 2021 IEP Annual Workshop was a track within the Delta Stewardship Council's 11th Biennial Bay-Delta Science Conference. The theme of the conference was "Building Resilience through Diversity in Science". The presentations given during the IEP track are shown below.

April 6, 2021 (Tuesday)
IEP Special Session: The Value of Long-Term Biological Monitoring in the San Francisco Estuary
Moderator: Jim Hobbs, CDFW

• The Value of Long-Term Monitoring of the San Francisco Estuary for Delta Smelt and Longfin Smelt - Trishelle Tempel, CDFW
• The Influence of Environmental Conditions in Long Term Fish Abundance Data - James White, CDFW
• Invasion of the Water Board Snatchers: Tridentiger Trends from the San Francisco Bay Study and Summer Townet Survey - Timothy Davis Malinich, CDFW
• Fish Food, Outflow, and Management Implications: The Values of Long-term Zooplankton Monitoring in the SFE - Arthur Barros, CDFW
• The Value of Long-Term Zooplankton Monitoring for Detecting Impacts of the Suisun Marsh Salinity Control Gate Managed Flow Action - Christina Burdi, CDFW

April 7, 2021 (Wednesday)
IEP Special Session: Success at Different Trophic Levels: Gaining Insight from Nutrients to Otoliths
Moderator: Stephanie Fong, CDFW

• A View from the Landscape Scale: Using Spatial Variation of Nutrients and Phytoplankton Across the Delta to Identify Underlying Biogeochemical Processes - Brian Bergamaschi, USGS
• Nine Years of Flow Pulses: A Synthesis of Water Quality, Plankton Subsidies and Fish Communities in the North Delta - Brittany Davis, DWR and Laura Twardochleb, DWR
• I'm Not That Shallow - Surprising Similarity in Zooplankton Communities Collected at Different Depths Near Wetland Restoration Sites - Rosemary Hartman, DWR
• Every Cog and Wheel: Understanding the Importance of Genomic Diversity in Central Valley Chinook Salmon - Mariah Meek, Michigan State University
• Years in Their Ears: What Can Fish Earbones Tell Us About Spring-run Chinook Salmon Success in an Increasingly Volatile Climate? - Flora Cordoleani, UC Santa Cruz/NOAA

April 8, 2021 (Thursday)
IEP Special Session: Fish Habitat Spatial Arrangements: Experience from Across the Estuary and Beyond
Moderator: Christine Joab, CDFW

• Four Decades of Juvenile Fish Responses to Hydroclimate: Advancing a State-Space Modeling Approach in the San Francisco Estuary - Denise Colombano, UC Berkeley
• Space Jam: A Spatially Explicit History of Estuary Fish Species - Dylan Stompe, UC Davis
• Suisun Marsh on the Edge of Resilience in an Era of Rapid Change - John Durand, UC Davis
• Differences Between Surface and Bottom Temperatures in the Upper San Francisco Estuary: Implications for Temperature Refugia - Brian Mahardja, US Bureau of Reclamation
• Investigating Longfin Smelt Utilization of Coastal Estuaries North of the San Francisco Estuary - Colin Brennan, ICF

April 9, 2021 (Friday)
IEP Special Session: Using Aquatic Surveys for Estimation and Communication: Bias, Quantification, and Display
Moderator: Steve Culberson, IEP Lead Scientist

• Relative Catchability Bias Among Sampling Gears for Fish Species within the San Francisco Estuary - Speaker: Brock Huntsman, USGS
• Let's Stop Guessing: Using Quantitative Tools Developed During Long-term Monitoring Review to Evaluate Survey Regime Alterations - Speaker: Jereme Gaeta, CDFW
• Quantifying Changes in Gear Efficiency to Reduce Bias in Estimating Long-term Abundance Trends - Speaker: Bryan Matthias, US Fish and Wildlife Service
• Real Time Tidal Excursion Mapping and Constituent Tracking, Fishery Surveys and Tools to Support Tidally Influenced Pelagic Habitat Identification - Speaker: David Osti, 34 North
• Web Based Approaches to Fisheries Data Communication - Speaker: Tom Pham, UC Santa Cruz/NOAA

The 2020 IEP Annual Workshop took place remotely on Zoom as individual sessions that were held from August 25 through October 3, 2020.

• 2020 Annual Workshop Program (PDF)
• 2020 Annual Workshop Speaker Abstracts (PDF)
• 2020 Annual Workshop Poster Abstracts (PDF)

The 2019 IEP Annual Workshop was held at the Lake Natoma Inn on March 5 through March 7, 2019.

• 2019 Annual Workshop Program (PDF)
• 2019 Annual Workshop Poster Abstracts (PDF)