Incorporating climate change into culvert design in Washington State, USA

Wilhere, George F.; Atha, J. B.; Quinn, Timothy; Tohver, I.; Helbrecht, Lynn

doi:10.1016/j.ecoleng.2017.04.009

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Accelerating coastal human population expansion may lead to increased urbanization across salmon‐bearing watersheds (Freeman et al, 2019; Neumann et al, 2015). Furthermore, climate‐driven changes in hydrology may amplify stream flow variability and exacerbate fish passage blocks associated with water conveyance structures (Wilhere et al, 2017). As a result, stream connectivity restoration has emerged as a management priority for freshwater drainages (Silva et al, 2018; Tickner et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Juvenile salmon habitat use drives variation in growth and highlights vulnerability to river fragmentation

et al. 2022

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Widespread stream network fragmentation from dams and culverts has altered habitat connectivity in river ecosystems and presents an acute threat to migratory fish. To support watershed management for an iconic migratory fish group, we assessed juvenile salmon growth outcomes across habitat use strategies and characterized how these life histories may be impacted by stream connectivity loss. Juvenile coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in the Big Lake drainage, Alaska, USA, were individually tracked over 2012-2013 and categorized into habitat use behaviors, with fish either remaining in streams throughout freshwater residency or migrating seasonally to overwinter in lake habitats. Size, growth rate, and body condition of smolts (n = 1113) were compared across habitat use strategies. Juvenile coho salmon that moved seasonally to lake overwintering habitats, the most frequently observed strategy, grew faster and were significantly larger as smolts compared to their counterparts who remained in streams exclusively (spring Age 1 fish: 18% larger by weight, 9% faster growth rate; spring Age 2+ fish: 26% heavier, 11% faster

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Juvenile salmon habitat use drives variation in growth and highlights vulnerability to river fragmentation

et al. 2022

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“…Habitat fragmentation has long been recognized as an obstacle to Pacific salmon recovery in lower latitudes, and these findings also highlight the importance of maintaining and restoring aquatic connectivity for coho salmon in high‐latitude catchments as human development and climatic change progress in these regions (Wilhere et al, 2017; Flitcroft, Arismendi & Santelmann, 2019). An increasing number of jurisdictions in North America have instituted guidelines for fish passage‐friendly water conveyance structures that minimize changes to natural stream flows (Hotchkiss & Frei, 2007; Fish Passage Technical Working Group, 2014; U.S.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Climate warming is driving hydrological changes in salmon‐bearing catchments, altering both mean flows and variability in flows that can affect juvenile fish (Leppi et al, 2014; Battin et al, 2017; Schoen et al, 2017). Seasonal drying of catchments might reduce the availability of low‐order stream habitat or off‐channel pools, whereas increases in the variability of flow regimes may interact with water conveyance infrastructure such as culverts, potentially leading to extreme water velocities that prevent movement or lead to physical injury for juvenile fish (Wilhere et al, 2017). As juvenile stages represent a critical survival period for many Pacific salmon populations (Bradford, 1995), understanding habitat use and movement dynamics of juvenile salmon throughout the annual cycle is a key knowledge need to manage freshwater basins for juvenile salmonids and assess the life history consequences of urbanization and changing hydrology for these anadromous species (Silva et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connectivity between lentic and lotic freshwater habitats identified as a conservation priority for coho salmon

Sethi

Ashline

Harris

et al. 2021

Aquatic Conservation

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Juvenile Pacific salmon exhibit diverse habitat use and migration strategies to navigate high environmental variability and predation risk during freshwater residency. Increasingly, urbanization and climate‐driven hydrological alterations are affecting the availability and quality of aquatic habitats in salmon catchments. Thus, conservation of freshwater habitat integrity has emerged as an important challenge in supporting salmon life‐history diversity as a buffer against continuing ecosystem changes. To inform catchment management for salmon, information on the distribution and movement dynamics of juvenile fish throughout the annual seasonal cycle is needed. A number of studies have assessed the ecology of juvenile coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) during summer and autumn seasons; catchment use by this species throughout the annual cycle is less well characterized, particularly in high‐latitude systems. Here, n = 3,792 tagged juvenile coho salmon were tracked throughout two complete annual cycles to assess basin‐wide distribution and movement behaviour of this species in a subarctic, ice‐bearing catchment. Juvenile coho salmon in the Big Lake basin, Alaska, exhibited multiple habitat use and movement strategies across seasons; however, summer rearing in lotic mainstem environments followed by migration to lentic overwinter habitats was identified as a prominent behaviour, with two‐thirds of tracked fish migrating en masse to concentrate in a small subset of upper catchment lakes for the winter. In contrast, the most significant tributary overwintering site (8% of tracked fish) occurred below a culvert and dam, blocking juvenile fish passage to a headwater lake, indicating that these fish may have been restricted from reaching preferred lentic overwinter habitats. These findings emphasize the importance of maintaining aquatic connectivity to lentic habitats as a conservation priority for coho salmon during freshwater residency.

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“…Recognizing that the basin-level conservation goals (water quality improvement and salmon recovery) could not be achieved without addressing riparian practices in the agricultural areas (e.g., Reeves et al 2018), the state began investigating the potential to translate successful elements of the forest-based strategy to the dryland agricultural CPE (The William D. Ruckelshaus Center 2010, Windrope et al 2020). The translation from forest-dominated to shrub-steppe (across ecological settings), from forestry lands to agricultural lands (differing land use), and from moist to arid (climatic contrast) revealed several challenges (Wilhere 2020). The state convened a technical advisory group in 2017 to provide a set of relationships analogous to the FEMAT curves for riverine management recommendations to maintain or enhance ecosystem condition in the CPE drylands.…”

Section: Case Study Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translatability of water governance experiments across settings and scales

Stahl¹,

Fremier²

2023

E&S

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Adaptive governance requires institutional capacity to coordinate responses to environmental problems at appropriate scales and utilizes networks for information sharing. This implies a capability to translate successful governance experiments from one social-ecological setting to another. Yet, translating lessons learned from case studies in adaptive water governance to other settings is all but straightforward. Watershed condition is a cumulative result of upstream ecological factors as well as land use decision-making processes, which may involve diverse stakeholders and multiple, nested levels of government. The relationships between site-specific land management decisions and water-related ecosystem services not only vary by location, but are further complicated by biogeochemical flows, ecological interactions, and social-ecological trade-offs. We view this governance challenge from a biophysical science perspective, highlighting the need to focus on translatability of governance approaches such that land use decision-making processes can better fit the dynamic, multidimensional, spatially continuous nature of riverine networks. To learn from a previous attempt to translate a successful water governance experiment across social-ecological settings, we investigated a case study of riverside area management in Washington State, northwestern USA. As participants in an agency-led workshop, we observed particular challenges in coordinating riverside management recommendations across a spatially variable social-ecological landscape. To clarify potential steps for translating riverine policy experiments, we intersected ecological understanding with adaptive governance scholarship. Using the case study as an example of the challenges of translating a policy experiment, we reviewed the ecological, management, and adaptive governance literatures to identify four elements of translatability: (1) a cross-sectoral, multiscale understanding of the shared goals or future desired state of the system; (2) quantified functional relationships between measurable site-scale features and ecosystem functions related to the shared goals; (3) definition frameworks to relate ecological concepts to the levels of potentially networked governance; (4) mapping strategies to visualize emerging networked governance in spatial context. We reviewed definitions pertaining to riverside areas and arranged them along a concept-application spectrum to provide a framework to relate ecological knowledge to the levels of potentially networked riverine governance. We mapped the spatial footprints of related policies nested within areas of similar ecological landscape characteristics to show spatial patterns that could inform translation of governance experiments in empirical context. We then discussed the role of translatability in adaptive water governance. We conclude with recommendations for considering the translatability of adaptive water-governance experiments and identifying potential opportunities to leverage existing ecological and instituti...

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Incorporating climate change into culvert design in Washington State, USA

Cited by 13 publications

References 60 publications

Juvenile salmon habitat use drives variation in growth and highlights vulnerability to river fragmentation

Juvenile salmon habitat use drives variation in growth and highlights vulnerability to river fragmentation

Connectivity between lentic and lotic freshwater habitats identified as a conservation priority for coho salmon

Translatability of water governance experiments across settings and scales

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