At the request of NOAA Fisheries (NOAA), the ISAB provides the attached report, which assesses the COMPASS Model, Version 1.0. This report is the third in a series of ISAB reports pertaining to the development of this new comprehensive fish passage model, which was created by NOAA Fisheries, along with federal, state, tribal agencies, and the University of Washington for use in developing the new Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion (BiOp).
The COMPASS model has improved markedly since our first examination of it in March 2006. However, we take it as our operational charge to report on all aspects of the "in-river" component of the model, and with this review we have not quite accomplished that charge. To complete the review of the in-river component, we need to review the missing appendices and would like to see responses to our five major comments listed in this report and to our comments on appendices 4, 6, and 9. On December 13th, the ISAB also received comments on the COMPASS model from the USFWS. The ISAB did not have time to fully consider these comments for this report but will in our next report. In fact, the ISAB expects that the COMPASS model team will incorporate the USFWS critique and model into their treatment, along with the NOAA and CRITFC models, before our next review. On a related matter, we plan on completing our review of the "below-Bonneville" model component by late January 2007, at the earliest. That component is only now beginning to be modeled and is still under active development.
