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Bull trout (Photo by
Bart Gamett, Salmon-Challis National Forest)
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Study Develops Forecasts On Which Columbia Basin Streams Will Serve As ‘Climate Refugia’
Posted on Friday, March 13, 2015 (PST)
Posted on Friday, March 13, 2015 (PST)
The “Climate Shield” study just published in the scientific journal Global Change Biology uses the high-resolution “Norwest” stream temperature scenarios developed from data contributed by more than 80 agencies with crowd-sourced biological datasets to develop accurate forecasts about specific streams that are most likely to act as climate refugia for native cutthroat trout and ESA-listed bull trout across the Pacific Northwest this century, said Dan Isaak, who along with Mike Young headed the research.
Different from previous studies of this nature is the level of precision with which we can now make those forecasts due to the amount of data that’s been aggregated for this effort across all 450,000 kilometers of stream in the region.
The findings, stemming from eight years of research, provides detailed analysis of the land administration associated with the refuges shows that 90 percent occur on public lands (70 percent on national forests) but only about 15 percent are within watersheds formally protected as wilderness areas or national parks.
“Hearteningly, it appears that although both species are likely to decline as warming progresses, neither is likely to go extinct regionally even under the most extreme climate change scenarios,” according to Isaak.
