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Thomas R. Payne & Associates is now part of the employee owned Normandeau Associates team.  We are the same professional staff with the expanded resources of a nationally recognized company providing high quality, practical environmental solutions.  Visit our Normandeau website also.

Fisheries Biology, Consulting, and Software Publishing
890 L Street, Arcata, California USA 95521
P.O. Box 4678, Arcata, California USA 95518
(707) 822-8478

Brief Professional Sketches of Associates at Thomas R. Payne & Associates

 

Thomas R. Payne

Mr. Thomas Payne is Principal Associate of Thomas R. Payne & Associates, a fisheries consulting firm in Arcata, California that he started in 1982.  Mr. Payne is a Certified Fisheries Scientist and has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Fisheries Biology from Humboldt State University.  He is a specialist in the application of the Instream Flow Incremental Methodology (IFIM) to evaluate the impacts of flow alteration on aquatic ecosystems.  In the past eighteen years, he has conducted or reviewed over two hundred instream flow studies on proposed and existing hydroelectric and irrigation projects and other water rights issues.  Work conducted or directed by Mr. Payne includes fish population sampling, habitat mapping and typing, hydraulic measurements, habitat use determinations, computer simulations, water temperature modeling, water quality studies, macroinvertebrate studies, license application preparation, agency negotiations, post-project analysis, and expert witness testimony.  He is also responsible for all business functions of TRPA, such as personnel management, project management, proposal preparation, accounting, and quality control.  Mr. Payne has presented numerous workshops in the use of IFIM to state and federal agencies and taught graduate-level courses as an Associate Professor of Fisheries at Humboldt State University.

 

Mark A. Allen

Mark Allen received a B.S. degree in Wildlife and Fisheries from University of Tennessee in 1980 and an M.S. in Natural Resources (fisheries emphasis) from Humboldt State University in 1986.  He has been employed by TRPA since 1985, where he has worked on a variety of projects, including habitat and fish abundance surveys, cumulative impact assessment, IFIM modeling, fish population recovery studies, and fish microhabitat requirements.  He has experience in a wide variety of stream types, from large warmwater rivers almost a mile wide to alpine headwater streams.  Mark has worked in cold salmonid climates (including nocturnal winter studies) and in tropical Pacific climates (with it’s unique indigenous species), targeting over 20 aquatic species. His most recent emphasis has involved conducting statistically rigorous, multi-year surveys to estimate abundance of fish in rivers and basins (some involving endangered species), and developing microhabitat models for instream flow studies.  He also prepares and conducts professional-level classes on microhabitat analyses for private sector, government, and university biologists.  Mark has published papers in scientific journals covering microhabitat selection and population estimation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tim Salamunovich

Tim Salamunovich has been a professional fisheries biologist since 1981 when he began his career with the National Park Service.  He received his Master of Science degree in Natural Resources from Humboldt State University in 1987, the same year he began working as a fisheries biologist for TRPA.   During his tenure with TRPA, Tim has been involved in a variety of activities including planning and performing instream flow studies throughout the western United States, long-term monitoring of trout populations in Sierra Nevada streams, preparing environmental impact documents, sampling and identifying both marine and freshwater invertebrates, and studying substrate and water quality issues bearing on anadromous salmonid spawning habitat.  Much of his graduate training involved courses in benthic ecology and he has planned and performed several subsequent macroinvertebrate studies. Several of his recent projects involve assessing the distribution and abundance of steelhead and salmon in streams draining the Sacramento-San Joaquin Basin and the effects of high flows on trout, frogs, and macroinvertebrates in a Sierra Nevadan river.

 

Donald J. Bremm

Donald Bremm is a fisheries biologist with twenty years of experience in the freshwater fisheries field.  His primary experience has been with TRPA in data collection and analyses associated with the IFIM.  Together with stream hydraulic data and fish criteria curve data collection and development, Don has created and calibrated several hundred PHABSIM aquatic habitat simulation models and performed time series analyses on many.  He has also worked extensively with the stream network temperature model (SNTEMP) and the stream segment temperature model (SSTEMP), together with their sub-component models.   This has involved data collection, model calibration, and alternative gaming analyses on varying stream sizes, from small, intermittent streams to large, complete river systems.  Don has a Master of Science degree in Natural Resources (emphasis - fisheries) from Humboldt State University, Arcata, California.  He also has had advanced training in PHABSIM and SNTEMP, and taught college-level classes in PHABSIM and a professional seminar class in SSTEMP. 

 

Steven D. Eggers

Steve Eggers has been a fishery biologist with TRPA since 1990, having received a B.S. in Zoology from San Diego State University in 1970 and a 1987 M.S. degree in Fisheries Biology from Humboldt State University.  Previous work experience includes positions with a number of consulting firms and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service beginning in 1978.  His background includes stream habitat assessment, fish population and microhabitat sampling, and instream flow studies.  In addition to numerous instream flow field studies, he has also performed hydraulic and fish habitat modeling using PHABSIM (Physical Habitat Simulation).  He is currently principal biologist for TRPA in the Snake River Basin Adjudication in Idaho, and in the instream flow assessment for the Upper Klamath River Project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas Gast

Thomas Gast has been seasonal fisheries biologist with TRPA since 1997 and permanent employee since 2002.  He received a B.A. in Marine Resource Management from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1988 and has worked on and led numerous freshwater fisheries and marine biology field crews in rigorous environments such as Antarctica, the Bering Sea, and the High Sierras over the last 20 years.  He is a licensed Master through the USCG for vessels up to 200 tons.  Thomas has had training in IFIM and PHABSIM and has been involved with all aspects of field data collection, data analysis, and report writing.  He works extensively with Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) PHABSIM data collection, has developed several methods of deployments in challenging habitat types, and, with the TRPA software engineer, created specific software to analyze,  reduce, and import ADCP data into RHABSIM.  Thomas collaborates with the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation, and Conservation District and SeagrassNet to monitor eelgrass in Humboldt Bay.

 

 

 

 

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