Increasing the Adaptive Capacity of Cold-Water Fishes Through Stream Barrier Removals
As the climate continues to warm, managers are faced with challenges in providing suitable habitat for cold-water fish to increase their adaptive capacity. While the removal of barriers to fish movement, such as culverts and dams, would provide a rare opportunity to increase their adaptive capacity, managers currently have a limited number of resources to anticipate the benefits this would bring, hindering their ability to properly allocate resources. Researchers supported by this Northwest CASC project will create an accessible web tool to inform managers on how the removal of these barriers will impact cold-water fish populations to aid in long term conservation and restoration for the coming decade.
Public Summary
Salmon and trout play important roles in ecosystems in addition to supporting subsistence, recreational, and commercial fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. As climate warming reduces suitable, available habitat for these cold-water fish, managers are faced with the challenge of how to best mitigate these impacts by increasing their ‘adaptive capacity’, or their ability to cope with change. A promising method is maintaining large-bodied migratory individuals, which is also beneficial to the public as migratory fish are typically the ones that support fisheries.
However, barriers to fish movement (e.g., culverts and dams) have already extirpated >30% of salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest and leave many remaining trout populations in habitats that will support only small-bodied residents. Recent legislation seeks to provide funding for removing these barriers, providing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to increase adaptive capacity, but managers have limited tools for anticipating the benefits from barrier removals, which hinders their ability to strategically allocate resources.
This project will translate cutting edge science into an easily accessible web tool that helps managers envision how moving or eliminating barriers changes the capacity for watersheds to grow migratory fish (based on water temperature). The web tool produced through this work will explore how reconnecting habitats with different seasonal patterns of water temperature affects the total amount of growth that is possible for fish. To broadly inform conservation and to understand the long-term value of restoring connectivity, the research team will also model how maintaining migratory individuals affects the persistence of populations in the face of warming. The research team includes end users at Trout Unlimited, the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, who will use the aforementioned science products to inform barrier removals in the coming decade, ensuring this work has the highest return on investment possible.
- Source: USGS Sciencebase (id: 67dc33bbd34eae450ac1c3d4)
As the climate continues to warm, managers are faced with challenges in providing suitable habitat for cold-water fish to increase their adaptive capacity. While the removal of barriers to fish movement, such as culverts and dams, would provide a rare opportunity to increase their adaptive capacity, managers currently have a limited number of resources to anticipate the benefits this would bring, hindering their ability to properly allocate resources. Researchers supported by this Northwest CASC project will create an accessible web tool to inform managers on how the removal of these barriers will impact cold-water fish populations to aid in long term conservation and restoration for the coming decade.
Public Summary
Salmon and trout play important roles in ecosystems in addition to supporting subsistence, recreational, and commercial fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. As climate warming reduces suitable, available habitat for these cold-water fish, managers are faced with the challenge of how to best mitigate these impacts by increasing their ‘adaptive capacity’, or their ability to cope with change. A promising method is maintaining large-bodied migratory individuals, which is also beneficial to the public as migratory fish are typically the ones that support fisheries.
However, barriers to fish movement (e.g., culverts and dams) have already extirpated >30% of salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest and leave many remaining trout populations in habitats that will support only small-bodied residents. Recent legislation seeks to provide funding for removing these barriers, providing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to increase adaptive capacity, but managers have limited tools for anticipating the benefits from barrier removals, which hinders their ability to strategically allocate resources.
This project will translate cutting edge science into an easily accessible web tool that helps managers envision how moving or eliminating barriers changes the capacity for watersheds to grow migratory fish (based on water temperature). The web tool produced through this work will explore how reconnecting habitats with different seasonal patterns of water temperature affects the total amount of growth that is possible for fish. To broadly inform conservation and to understand the long-term value of restoring connectivity, the research team will also model how maintaining migratory individuals affects the persistence of populations in the face of warming. The research team includes end users at Trout Unlimited, the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, who will use the aforementioned science products to inform barrier removals in the coming decade, ensuring this work has the highest return on investment possible.
- Source: USGS Sciencebase (id: 67dc33bbd34eae450ac1c3d4)