Stream Temperature and Thermal Sensitivity in Great Basin Region, 2011 - 2021

Warming climates, declining winter snowpacks, and increased periods of drought have contributed to warming stream temperatures and declining stream flows, impacting habitat availability for cold water species. Particularly in the northern Great Basin region available habitat may be restricted to headwaters, where cooler temperatures and reliable stream flows allow cold water species, such as Lahontan cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii henshawi), to persist (Dunham and others 1999, 2003; Warren and others 2014). As these stream habitats contract in relation to warming temperatures and loss of flows, the trout populations they support are increasingly at risk of extinction (Dunham and others 1997, Leasure and others 2020, Neville and others 2021). Between 2010 and 2021, the U.S. Geological Survey Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center (FRESC) conducted stream temperature surveys across the northern Great Basin, southern Pacific Northwest, and western California regions. In this study, data from these surveys were compiled to (1) statistically analyze existing water-temperature data and (2) quantify the sensitivity of the thermal regime within headwater streams. This data release includes daily stream temperature time series and statistics, daily flow status time series and wet ratios, and fitted paired air-water sinusoidal regressions and thermal sensitivity metrics. A reproducible workflow for the paired air-water temperature analysis is provided as R scripts within Paired_Air_Stream_Temperature.zip. References: Dunham, J.B., Vinyard, G.L., Rieman, B.E., 1997, Habitat fragmentation and extinction risk of Lahontan cutthroat trout: North American Journal of Fisheries Management, v. 17, p. 1126-1133. Dunham, J.B., Peacock, M., Rieman, B.E., Schroeter, R., Vinyard, G.L., 1999, Local and geographic variability in the distribution of stream-living Lahontan cutthroat trout: Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, v. 128, p. 875-889. Dunham, J.B., Schroeter, R., Rieman, B.E., 2003, Influence of maximum water temperature on occurence of Lahotan cutthroat trout within streams: North American Journal of Fisheries Management, v. 23, p. 1042-1049. Leasure, D.R., Wenger, S.J., Chelgren, N.D., Neville, H.M., Dauwalter, D.C., Bjork, R., Fesenmyer, K.A., Dunham, J.B., Peacock, M.B., Luce, C.H., Lute, A.C., Isaak, D.J., 2018, Hierarchical multi-population viability analysis: Ecological Society of America, v. 100, Issue 1, e02538, https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2538 Neville, H.M., Leasure, D.R., Dauwalter, D.C., Dunham, J.B., Bjork, R., Fesenmyer, K.A., Chelgren, N.D., Peacock, M.M., Luce, C.H., Isaak, D.J., Carranza, L.A., Sjoberg, J. and Wenger, S.J., 2020, Application of multiple-population viability analysis to evaluate species recovery alternatives: Conservation Biology, v. 34, p. 482-493. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13385 Warren, D.R, Dunham, J.B., Hockman‐Wert, D., 2014, Geographic Variability in Elevation and Topographic Constraints on the Distribution of Native and Nonnative Trout in the Great Basin: Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, v. 143, Issue 1, p. 205–218, https://doi.org/10.1080/00028487.2013.833551