Salmon vulnerability maps - Effect of Climate Change on Salmon Population Vulnerability

1. Steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and other Pacific salmon are threatened by unsustainable

levels of harvest, genetic introgression from hatchery stocks and degradation or loss of freshwater

habitat. Projected climate change is expected to further stress salmon through increases

in stream temperatures and altered stream flows.

2. We demonstrate a spatially explicit method for assessing salmon vulnerability to projected

climatic changes (scenario for the years 20302059), applied here to steelhead salmon across

the entire Pacific Northwest (PNW). We considered steelhead exposure to increased temperatures

and more extreme high and low flows during four of their primary freshwater life stages:

adult migration, spawning, incubation and rearing. Steelhead sensitivity to climate change

was estimated on the basis of their regulatory status and the condition of their habitat. We

assessed combinations of exposure and sensitivity to suggest actions that may be most effective

for reducing steelhead vulnerability to climate change.

3. Our relative ranking of locations suggested that steelhead exposure to increases in temperature

will be most widespread in the southern Pacific Northwest, whereas exposure to substantial

flow changes will be most widespread in the interior and northern Pacific Northwest.

There were few locations where we projected that steelhead had both relatively low exposure

and sensitivity to climate change.

4. Synthesis and applications. There are few areas where habitat protection alone is likely to

be sufficient to conserve steelhead under the scenario of climate change considered here.

Instead, our results suggest the need for coordinated, landscape-scale actions that both

increase salmon resilience and ameliorate climate change impacts, such as restoring connectivity

of floodplains and high-elevation habitats.

Salmon gridded data for PNW.

Addresses Legal Mandate

Derived from other data

Loaded by batch 4295, 01-31-2013 18:18

These data are available to the public

Peer Reviewed Publication: Restoring salmon habitat for a changing climate

Peer Reviewed Publication: Salmon vulnerabiity to climate change

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Climate modeling, scoring of steelhead vulnerabiliy