Climate Change and Salmon Conservation

Spatial map of floodplain habitats from the RAP website

A presidential task force recently released a report requesting all federal agencies to consider climate-related risks and vulnerabilities as part of their policies and practices. However, climate change is seldom considered in salmonid conservation decision making, despite major declines in these ecologically and economically critical species. Protecting native salmonids and their riverscapes against the impacts of climate change demands better understanding of the interactive influences of environmental variation (especially water temperature and flow), habitat and anthropogenic stressors (e.g., landuse change), genetics/genomics, and population demographics (e.g., abundance). To meet this challenge, FLBS researchers continue work on applying a prototype decision support system (DSS) to aid in the decision-making process for conserving salmonids and their habitats under a changing climate.

Read more about the Riverscape Analysis project

Publications
  • Luck, M., N. Maumenee, D. Whited, J. Lucotch, S. Chilcote, M. Lorang, D. Goodman, K. McDonald, J. Kimball and J. Stanford. 2010. Remote sensing analysis of physical complexity of North Pacific Rim rivers to assist wild salmon conservation. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 35(11):1330–1343.
  • Wu, H., J. S. Kimball, N. Mantua and J. Stanford. 2011. Automated upscaling of river networks for macroscale hydrological modeling. Water Resources Research 47(3):W03517.
  • Wu, H., J. S. Kimball, M. M. Elsner, N. Mantua, R. F. Adler and J. A. Stanford. 2012. Projected climate change impacts on the hydrology and temperature of Pacific Northwest rivers. Water Resources Research 48:W11530.
  • Whited, D. C., J. S. Kimball, J. A. Lucotch, N. K. Maumenee, H. Wu, S. D. Chilcote and J. A. Stanford. 2012. A Riverscape Analysis Tool developed to assist wild salmon conservation across the North Pacific Rim. Fisheries 37(7):305–314.
  • Whited, D. C., J. S. Kimball, M. S. Lorang and J. A. Stanford. 2013. Estimation of juvenile salmon habitat in Pacific Rim rivers using multiscalar remote sensing and geospatial analysis. River Research and Applications 29(2):135–148.