Associates

 Bill Kier is a certified fisheries scientist who during his long professional life has been a California Department of Fish and Game field scientist, program manager and environmental division chief; an assistant Secretary of the California Resources Agency; a California State Senate consultant to committees on fish, wildlife, natural resources and water resources; developer and Director of the Senate’s office for research and policy development; and, since 1986, a developer of, and Principal with Kier Associates. Bill serves as the group’s senior project administrator, editor, and policy advisor.

Bill’s most recent scientific journal contribution is Reconsidering the Estimation of Salmon Mortality Caused by the State and Federal Water Export Facilities in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, San Francisco Estuary’, which he co-authored with his longtime associate Andy Jahn.

Pat Higgins is a fisheries scientist with a long interest in the interaction of watershed land and water use, particularly in wildland settings, and fish habitat and water quality. Pat co-authored the American Fisheries Society’s 1992 Pacific salmon assessment “Factors in northern California threatening stocks with extinction”.

Pat serves as Kier Associates’ senior watershed analyst.

Jan Derksen, Ph.D. is a skilled computer program developer and served for 15 years on the Humboldt State University computer science faculty before joining Kier Associates in 1992.

Jan created the Klamath Resource Information System, KRIS (www.krisweb.com) which has been used widely for watershed data capture, integration, and analysis in northern California, the Pacific Northwest, and the salmon watersheds of the Gulf of Maine.

Dr. Derksen provides Kier Associates direction on projects involving information management, the application of models to environmental assessment, and spatial analysis.

Eli Asarian has strong skills in water quality analysis, particularly in large streams like the Klamath River. With the other members of the group Eli has developed KRIS watershed data capture, integration, and analysis projects. He has served as Kier Associates’ lead investigator for projects on the Klamath River and in the Gulf of Maine.

Paul Trichilo, Ph.D. is Kier Associates’ principal spatial analyst. After years of using GIS to advance integrated pest management at the University of California and Texas A & M, Paul returned to his North Coast California roots and became one of northwestern California’s most accomplished spatial analysts of watershed conditions.

Diane Higgins, who holds degrees in physical sciences and education, is the developer of “California’s Salmon and Steelhead, Our Natural Heritage” a widely used curriculum supplement designed to further student understanding of Pacific salmon anatomy, physiology, life histories, and habitat requirements.

Diane created and maintains the KRIS web site www.krisweb.com and provides editorial services to Kier Associates publications including KRIS watershed information integration projects.

Mary Claire Kier has a degree in fisheries science and is the principal manager of the KRIS document collection, which now contains over 4,000 technical reports, journal articles, historical items used by the Kier Associates team in assessing watershed condition and suitability for supporting the beneficial uses of lakes, rivers, and estuaries. The KRIS bibliographic collection hosts a very high daily volume of downloads by internet users.