Water Management Adaptations for Aquatic Ecosystem Services Under a Changing Climate. Analytical Framework and Case Study for Chinook Salmon in California

Spring-run Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) are vulnerable to climate change because, before spawning in autumn, adults hold in river pools where temperature increases during summer.

The authors set out to assemble an analytical framework to assess temperature and streamflow thresholds that would lead to critical reductions in spring-run Chinook salmon abundance, and to evaluate management adaptations to ameliorate these impacts. To achieve this, they coupled the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) system and SALMOD, a spatially explicit and size/stage structured model that predicts population dynamics of salmon in freshwater systems, and combined them with climate data.

This paper was presented at the Fall 2010 Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, Calif., Dec. 13-17. For the full abstract, click here (external link).