Climate Change and Native Salmonids - Progress

Over the past year we have made significant progress on the objectives outlined in our research proposal. Progress on each of our objectives is as follows:

Develop a database including all existing species distribution and habitat information, and air and water temperature data: We have completed the database for all of the species identified in the proposal including maps of the distribution of all species, coarse scale habitat information, and the air and water temperature data. In addition, we are working on a series of more fine scaled maps for the area in the upper Snake River for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC). GYC added additional funding to the proposal to do a more complete analysis of climate risk to Yellowstone cutthroat.

Develop maps defining existing and projected future distributions of native salmonids factoring in anticipated temperature, hydrology, and non-native impacts alone and in combination: We have developed maps of low, moderate, and high risk for nearly all western trout and these will be included on the website as well as the Open File report that is in preparation. These maps were also presented in our talks at the symposium we sponsored at the Western Division of the American Fisheries Society meeting in Albuquerque. Drought, winter flooding, wildfire, and increased summer temperature were used as key variables in the modeling effort.

Develop an open file report of this analysis that would include data analysis, maps and forecasts for each of the species listed:
Haak, A.L., Williams, J.E., Isaak, D., Todd, A., Muhlfeld, C., Kershner, J.L., Gresswell, R., Hostetler, S., and Neville, H.M., 2010, The potential influence of changing climate on the persistence of salmonids of the inland west: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2010–1236, 74 p.

Preparation of a scientific journal article that synthesizes the work: We are currently working on a new article that includes all of the species that were included in our proposal. We have an article in the North American Journal of Fish Management that has been accepted for publication that provides some of the foundation for this work on a smaller set of cutthroat sub-species. Additional articles are being prepared by a number of us that are related to this work. We anticipate additional opportunities for publication as we complete the open file report.

Distribution of information through a series of workshops and meetings with resource managers to update them on the projected change scenarios: We recently completed a symposium for the Western Division of the American Fisheries Society that included papers from all of the work that was part of our proposal and included additional work from some of our collaborators. The abstracts and talks from this work are being posted to our website. We attracted approximately 100 managers and scientists to this meeting and held an open discussion session at the end of the meeting to gather feedback and comments. Members of our group have presented the initial findings from our work to national BLM management in Washington, DC, the US Fish and Wildlife Service Strategic Habitat Conservation planning meetings in Denver, CO and San Francisco, CA. We’ve met with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition to discuss our findings and received additional funding to support additional analysis for the Upper Snake River. We are holding a workshop with the Yellowstone cutthroat trout working group in fall of 2009 to discuss how they can use this information in future planning and recovery efforts.

Additional Work: We are currently writing proposals with partners within USGS, the Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the Forest Service to expand work that has resulted from this project. We hope to receive additional funding from the Climate Change and Wildlife Center to downscale some of the work we have started to make more accurate forecasts of the effects of climate change on these species in regional areas that may have more direct utility to managers. Once we have these regional models, we propose to develop decision support tools for managers that will help them understand the consequences of various climate scenarios to native trout management and restoration, and to conduct workshops on using these tools.