Warming streams could be the end for (Spring-Run Chinook) salmon (in California)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=9996

Warming streams could be the end for salmon

September 1, 2011

Warming streams could spell the end of spring-run Chinook salmon in California by the end of the century, according to a study by scientists at UC Davis, the Stockholm Environment Institute and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

There are options for managing water resources to protect the salmon runs, although they would impact hydroelectric power generation, said Lisa Thompson, director of the Center for Aquatic Biology and Aquaculture at UC Davis. A paper describing the study is published online this week by the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management.

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Working with Marisa Escobar and David Purkey at SEI’s Davis office, Thompson and colleagues at UC Davis used a model of the Butte Creek watershed, taking into account the dams and hydropower installations along the river, combined with a model of the salmon population, to test the effect of different water management strategies on the fish. They fed in scenarios for climate change out to 2099 from models developed by David Yates at NCAR in Boulder, Colo.

In almost all scenarios, the fish died out because streams became too warm for adults to survive the summer to spawn in the fall.

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http://ascelibrary.org/wro/resource/1/jwrmxx/v1/i1/p140_s1