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4 You should reconsider your hypotheses. You have three site types to evaluate (i.e., manipulated sites. naturally flooding sections of the floodplain, and those where levees will be removed). Don't try to answer too finely detailed qCJestions, the variance will be high among sample data and you may end research projects with unclear answers. Instead focus on larger issues. For example, H 1: Mean differences in catch per unit effort for razorback sucker and otller native fishes between the three site types are equal to zero; and H2: Mean differences in catch per wiit effort for selected nonnative fishes between the three site types are equal to zero. Subsets of Hl and H2 might be primarily depression, or primarily terrace. In other words you can select sites of each three main types that are primarily depression or terrace. Comments on Implementation Strategy (page 6). Why remove levees from wetlands only, why not from diverse floodplain areas that will allow the river channel to do its work and create a natural progression of habitats as a function of overbank flow (i.e., bankfull discharge) where all constraints to erosion and channel migration are removed? It is important that areas of the floodplain to be undated should be viewed not for what presently exists there, geomorphically and vegetatively but what will develop during an ensuing time frame after the river channel has had a chance to transform it into a Ilatural and if)tegral part of the erosion zone or meander bait. You have adopted the philosophy that what endangered fishes need is inundated wetlands, but maybe what they need is a complex habitat of bra;ded channels, chutes, sandbars, sandbar pools, islands and ephemeral wetlands all of which are in a state of dynamic equilibrium where the norm is topographical instability. Such a site Ii.e., the levee removal site) can then be compared with lesser degrees of instability, where some controls exist (naturally flooded sites under present institutional constraint!. and highly controlled areas (manipulated sites). In my view the sites selected should be the best chance to evaluate restoration of dynamic process by levee removal. In these sites every effort should be made to eliminate the constraints on the main channel and its interaction with this piece of floodplain. If the channel has become entrenched it should be encourage, with the use of selected channel control structures such as hardpoints or chevrons, to initiate lateral migration that may ultimately engage the restored piece oi floodplain. Ii this is not attempted you will not be testing the real benefits of levee removal. Simply initiating a period of inundation followed by a periOd of drainage will not satisfy your Goal Statement (i.e., to restore floodplain habitats and functions.. ..).