Oct272015
Daily DrakeClimateShieldDownloadUnits

It sounds like expensive wader technology, but the Cold-Water Climate Shield is actually a new federal project designed to identify cold-water streams and habitat for native fish species across five western states.

As the west heats up and climate change becomes undeniable, cutthroat and bull trout are the first fish to suffer. In Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon these fish occupy a fraction of their shrinking historical ranges. In order to further understand and needs of native species and how to protect them from drought and climate change, scientists on the project created a cold-water map of headwaters streams in the five states.

ClimateShieldDownloadUnitsThe mapped area contains streams with temperatures preferred by cutthroat and bull trout, but are too cold for non-native species like browns and brook trout. These specific water temps, in turn, form a natural climate shield.

“Rather than spending money to build artificial barriers on streams to prevent the upstream advance of invasive species (which is very expensive and commonly done in some areas), the climate refugia streams we’re highlighting are so cold that you wouldn’t need to build a barrier to preserve the native community,” says Dan Isaak, a research fisheries biologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Boise.

The nuts and bolts is a network of 4,000 temperature sensors scattered across streams in the five states and 16,000 other sites transmitting information, accumulating 50 million temperature readings. The project also enables scientists to simply take a water sample to determine the fish DNA make up of a particular stream, rather than using electro-shock techniques. Using this new strategy, fish populations that have previously never been analyzed can be sampled for native and non-native presence.

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Tom Bie
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Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.

Category: Daily Drake
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Author: Tom Bie

Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.

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