H2ONCoast

Below are two important climate related happenings for folks who would like to know more or who would like to be more involved with policy and science around climate change.

Senate to hold hearing on climate modeling

On May 8, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will hold a full committee hearing, Improving the Capacity of U.S. Climate Modeling for Decision-Makers and End-Users. The hearing will examine the current computing capacity to process models at the regional and local scales, the need for continuous observational data to support the models, and the basic science to support the improvement of the next generation of climate models to meet the needs of decision makers. The hearing will focus on developing applications, consumer expectations, and network operation. The hearing will include testimony from several leading experts, including Dr. Edward S. Sarachik of the University of Washington. The hearing will take place at 2:30 pm. For more information or to view the hearing via the web, you can click here. Modeling of climate change is a critical link from the loftier realms of climate science to the practical policy response. Also, the finer the models become, the better the understanding of regional and local-scale impacts, which gets us into concrete local actions.

NOAA seeks public comment on climate change report

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is seeking public comments on its draft report, U.S. Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Product 3.4 “Abrupt Climate Change.” The report focuses on the potential for abrupt changes to the Earth’s climate system. Comments on the report must be received by June 16. For more information: http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap3-4/default.php. Though they may seem removed from everyday life, these types of reports very often feed indirectly into policy and action by the federal government, and also can play an important role in state priorities. National and state Sea Grant priorities–to which this author is somewhat beholden–are also influenced by these types of reports.

Happy Earth Day! As I have discussed on H2ONCoast many times before, biological invasions constitute one of the most important threats to watershed health and human economy. Next to habitat loss, biological invasions are the second most serious threat to biological diversity. To boot, they cost Americans alone $138 billion a year in clean up, control, and on-going prevention. Below is a press release from the new campaign designed to highlight this issue. For more details on how to get involved, check out the many links below, and for more information on the issue, tune in to OPB tonight at 8:00 PM for their premier of “The Silent Invasion.”

Salem, OR–What better day than Earth Day to call attention to one of the greatest threats to Oregon’s way of life? April 22 is the launch of a first-of-its kind statewide campaign called “Stop the Invasion,” which includes a documentary, publications, volunteer opportunities, a coordinated effort to identify, prevent and control invasive species, and research to gauge the awareness and attitudes of Oregonians toward the problem.

“This campaign truly represents the highest level of collaboration amongst government, nonprofit, and private entities in Oregon,” said Governor Ted Kulongoski. “This is an excellent example of what can happen when people work together to leverage resources to make a difference to Oregon’s native fish and wildlife resources, economy, and quality of life.”

The campaign launches on April 22 at 8:00 pm with the premiere of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “The Silent Invasion,” a one-hour documentary on invasive species created to raise public awareness and encourage people take action in their own communities.

Also on April 22, two Web sites will launch to help the public take action against invasive species. At the Oregon Invasive Species Hotline, www.oregoninvasiveshotline.org, Oregonians can report and upload photos of suspected invasives and interact with invasive species experts. The Silent Invasion companion site, www.opb.org/silentinvasion, will provide extensive links and information on invasive species in Oregon including a video archive of stories about invasives in Oregon. The weekly series Oregon Field Guide will continue to focus on invasives species in a number of stories during the year.

GardenSmart Oregon: a Guide to Non-invasive Plants will be released in April. The booklet identifies 25 of the most threatening invasive plants across Oregon and recommends non-invasive alternative plants for gardeners and landscapers. This free booklet will be available statewide in garden centers and other businesses and from local government agencies. It was developed by the City of Portland, The Nature Conservancy, Oregon Sea Grant, OSU Extension, Oregon Association of Nurseries, and OPB.

Also in April, over 100,000 OPB members and about 50,000 subscribers to the Statesman Journal are receiving a publication on invasive species that provides specific actions people can take to reduce the spread of invasives.

SOLV is participating in the campaign by coordinating volunteer weed pulls with over 10,000 Oregonians in 2008. Their Web site, www.solv.org/programs/invasives.asp, includes a statewide calendar of events for invasive vegetation removal projects.

In addition to contributing to GardenSmart Oregon, The Nature Conservancy is developing an early detection—rapid response program in Oregon. The project trains volunteers to regularly monitor priority natural areas and identify and report invasives so they can be stopped before they spread. More information at www.nature.org/oregon. [NOTE: Tillamook County will be one of the pilot locations for this new initiative! Stay tuned to H2ONC for more details on how to get involved this summer.]

The Oregon Invasive Species Council is serving as a clearinghouse for information and action to address invasive species statewide. The council is a consortium of federal, state, county, and local government agencies, nonprofit organizations, universities, and industry representatives dedicated to a coordinated and comprehensive effort to keep invasive species out of Oregon and to eliminate, reduce, or mitigate the impacts of invasives already present. Web site: www.oregon.gov/OISC/.

Oregon State University and Oregon Sea Grant are conducting pre- and post-campaign surveys to determine how much Oregonians know about invasives species and what ordinary citizens can do to help prevent their spread. This follows focus group studies conducted by the university last year to gauge awareness and attitudes among key stakeholders in Oregon including gardeners, boaters, anglers and hunters. Oregon Sea Grant is also releasing a new publication on aquatic invasive species, On the Lookout for Aquatic Invaders: Identification Guide for the Pacific Northwest.

The Statesman Journal is publishing a series of in-depth articles on invasive species in Oregon and their economic and ecological impacts. The newspaper has also created a comprehensive Web site, www.invasivespeciesoforegon.com, and is producing educational materials for use in classrooms.

Other participants in “Stop the Invasion” include the Oregon Departments of Fish and Wildlife, Agriculture and Forestry, Oregon Marine Board, Port of Portland, Bureau of Indian Affairs—Warm Springs, USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, USDA Plant Protection and Quarantine, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Portland State University, many cooperative weed management areas and county weed boards, along with numerous citizens, corporations, private foundations, and organizations. The “Stop the Invasion” campaign is receiving national attention because of the collaboration among government, nonprofit, and private entities and its scope.

No, this is not just another cheesy science fiction movie of the week. Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), along with a host of partners including Oregon Sea Grant, are launching a major public education campaign highlighting invasive species on Tuesday, April 22nd. The Silent Invasion presents several stories about the growing impact of invasive species on Oregon as well as other locations around the world. Some of these invaders–both animal and plant–have not yet reached the North Oregon Coast or the Lower Columbia, but are working their way here. Some, including invasive cord grass or Spartina and the tiny but fast-reproducing quagga mussel have the potential create significant impacts on the quality of our environment and ability to harness natural resources.

I was fortunate to sit through a first public screening of the Silent Invasion. I urge readers of this blog to take the time to view the hour long feature, which airs Tuesday, April 22nd, 8:00pm on OPB. You can learn more about the show and the campaign it has spawned by visiting http://www.opb.org/programs/invasives/. Local opportunities to get involved in the fight against invasive species are coming soon — stay tuned to H2ONCoast for more news.

Here’s a new twist on an new problem: climate change (or increased warmth and carbon dioxide associated with climate change) may increase weed growth too. One of the chief arguments that climate change isn’t such a bad thing after all–the Green Earth argument–is the logic that greenhouse conditions and CO2 will assist humans with greater food crop and forest yields. One of the best arguments against this logic are that our crops (and forests) are not adapted to take advantage of the increased or decreased precipitation patterns–at least not where they are today. But it does appear that increased CO2 could be very good for weeds at least! For details, read the Weed Science Society of America press release posted below:

(LAWRENCE, Kansas) — Is global warming fueling a new generation of more aggressive weeds? According to recent research, the answer may be yes.

One of the major characteristics of a warming planet is an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Rising carbon dioxide has been shown to help vegetable and grain crops grow more quickly, become more drought-resistant and produce potentially higher yields. Unfortunately, though, the impact of rising carbon dioxide seems to be far more pronounced in the weeds that compete with crops than in the crops themselves.

“Weeds are survivors,” said Lee Van Wychen, director of science policy for the Weed Science Society of America. “They can fill various niches and thrive under a wide range of conditions. While we have about 45 major crops in the U.S., there are more than 400 species of different weeds associated with those crops. There is always another weed species ready to become a major competitor with a crop if growing conditions change, such as an increase in carbon dioxide levels.”

The impact of rising carbon dioxide levels on weeds can be striking. In a study conducted by Dr. Lewis Ziska of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, weeds grown under urban conditions of warmer temperatures and more carbon dioxide – conditions anticipated for the rest of the world in 50 years – grew to four times the height of those in a country plot 40 miles outside the city, where carbon dioxide and temperature reflected background conditions.

So what if there are a few more weeds? Well, Ziska’s research shows that common ragweed plants exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide dramatically increased the amount of pollen they produced. A doubling in carbon dioxide led to a quadrupling of pollen. Some people are allergic to ragweed pollen, resulting in the “hay fever” response, including sneezing and watery eyes. Additional work by Ziska also suggests that even recent increases in carbon dioxide during the last 50 years may have led to bigger poison ivy plants with a more virulent form of the oil that causes people to break out in a rash.

“As the climate and carbon dioxide levels change, we can no longer assume the weed control strategies we used in the past will continue to work,” Ziska said. “Not only are some of the nation’s most invasive weeds spreading, but they are becoming more difficult and costly to control. Understanding the impact of increasing carbon dioxide on weed control is still in its infancy. While researchers explore new approaches, we will need to mix and match the strategies currently available.”

About the Weed Science Society of America

The Weed Science Society of America, a nonprofit professional society, was founded in 1956 to encourage and promote the development of knowledge concerning weeds and their impact on the environment. The Weed Science Society of America promotes research, education and extension outreach activities related to weeds, provides science-based information to the public and policy makers, and fosters awareness of weeds and their impacts on managed and natural ecosystems. For more information, visit www.wssa.net.

European imports, Zebra mussels have become a huge invasive species problem throughout the Great Lakes region where they proliferate in freshwater lakes, forming monocultures of the critters on beaches, boats, docs, power plant intakes, and other natural or human-made surfaces. Right now, all eyes in the West are on the zebra’s close cousin, the quagga mussel which has made inroads into the Colorado River–and therefore could be on Oregon’s doorstep soon as a hitchhiker on a recreational boat. So it is good news to know that researchers in New York have come upon a new tool–a bacterial toxin–for controlling the zebra mussel. We can only hope the same types of tools are applicable to the quagga. Read more on the topic at Albany’s Times Union by clicking here. The article is exerpted below:

CAMBRIDGE — A small laboratory in the rolling farmland of northern Washington County may have dealt a real setback to the zebra mussel, a tiny striped mollusk that infests waters of New York and about two dozen other states.

Years of research at the former state fish hatchery have found an environmentally safe way to slow the invader from southern Russia. Hundreds of millions have spread to lakes, rivers and the plumbing of power plants two decades after showing up in the Great Lakes in the ballast water of ocean-going freighters.

Daniel Molloy, director of the State Museum’s Field Research Laboratory, expects mass production of a natural toxin he discovered for zebra mussels to begin in 2010.

A half-million-dollar, two-year grant from the National Science Foundation will support work by California-based Marrone Organic Innovations, which has a state contract to sell the toxin.

It could mean power plants and other places that need to control mussels can stop using chlorine, a powerful chemical that also kills fish and other aquatic life, and leaves cancer-causing compounds in the water.

“This is very exciting,” said Molloy. “We started looking at this in 1991, and now are moving toward commercialization.” In 2001, Molloy found his natural assassin — a simple freshwater bacterium called pseudomonas fluorescens strain CLO145.

The bacteria, which was patented by the state, contains a toxin that destroys the mussel’s digestive system by giving it something akin to a fatal bleeding ulcer. It does not harm other aquatic life.

Still, Molloy warned the toxin is not a “silver bullet” to eradicate zebra mussels from every body of water. “Look at it more in terms of control,” he said.

Large lakes would require too much of the toxin to economically treat them completely, he said, although treatment could be effective in smaller areas, like swimming beaches.

Locally, infested lakes include Ballston and Saratoga lakes in Saratoga County; Lake George and Glen Lake, Warren County; and Hedges Lakes, Washington County. Lake Champlain, as well as Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, also are infested.

Molloy said the state will get part of any profits from the sale of the toxin. “I won’t get a nickel from this. I am a civil servant. Maybe I can get an extra vacation day,” Molloy said with a laugh.

Thanks to Joan Cabreza, Wetland Scientist & Regional Invasive Species Coordinator, US Environmental Protection Agency for this and other contributions to H2ONC. Happy retirement Joan–you will be missed!

While Oregon may be nick-named ‘the Beaver State,’ one of the best-know icons of our state’s wildlife heritage is the anadromous (ocean-going) salmon. Today, the Oregon Coast’s salmon numbers are roughly seven percent of what they once were in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. This decline is the result of many decades of human activities on the land and in the ocean as well as globally changing conditions for these important fish. Urbanization, fishing, logging, farming, and dam operations are examples of activities that have altered salmon populations by changing their habitat, reducing fish numbers, or affecting water quality. Salmon population declines have caused the majority of Oregon’s salmon species to be protected by the federal Endangered Species Act.

In 1997, a diverse group of stakeholders from all sectors, the Oregon Legislature, and then-Governor John Kitzhaber established the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds. The Oregon Plan was formed because Oregonians believed that the state should devise its own home-grown response to salmon declines rather than wait for federal instruction and oversight. The plan created a relatively small state agency called the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB) with a mandate to provide grants to locally-run, volunteer watershed restoration efforts. These OWEB grants come from a combination of Oregon Lottery and salmon license plate proceeds. According to OWEB, every dollar the state invests in watershed projects is usually matched by at least $1.50 of private, federal, and local government funds.

One of the unique features of the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds is that its implementation is not in the hands of a large state bureaucracy, but rests instead with local groups called watershed councils. Much of the Oregon Plan work is carried out by these councils. Watershed councils are locally organized, voluntary, non-regulatory groups established to improve the condition of watersheds in their area. The council provides local people a voice that can significantly influence watershed management decisions. Watershed councils can also help new residents understand and get involved in natural resources and land management issues in their area.

The formation of a watershed council is a local government decision. The councils work within their watersheds and with multiple stakeholders to address watershed health in a holistic manner. A typical council is a forum that brings local, state, and federal land management agencies together with local property owners and private land managers. Most watershed councils have a staff of one or more employees that serve to coordinate its efforts.

Watershed councils work with private landowners and a host of other partners to do voluntary projects that improve water quality and fish and wildlife habitat while maintaining the productivity of the land. Planting streamside trees and shrubs, reducing erosion and runoff, installing streamside fencing, replacing fish-blocking culverts, removing invasive vegetation, and restoring wetlands are just a few examples of projects that private landowners undertake with the help of watershed councils. Tillamook County hosts the Upper Nehalem, Lower Nehalem, Tillamook Bay, and Nestucca/Neskowin watershed councils.

Formed in 1998, the Tillamook Bay Watershed Council is the largest of these, working within drainages of the five rivers that enter the Tillamook Bay. Council members are the heart and soul of the organization. They provide vision for on-the-ground projects and outreach activities and take a hands-on interest in the organization by volunteering their time and effort on projects. Members are leaders in the community and are involved in other civic organizations. Main interest groups that are present in the watershed and are represented on the Tillamook Bay Watershed Council include Oregon Department of Forestry, Bureau of Land Management, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Tillamook Estuaries Partnership, Tillamook County Soil and Water Conservation District, the Tillamook County Creamery Association (representing the dairy industry), the oyster industry, charter fishing, small municipalities, small business, Tillamook County, Central Coast Land Conservancy, as well as local residents and landowners representing the five rivers of the Tillamook Bay Watershed.

Recent years have witnessed reductions in returning coho and Chinook on the Oregon Coast. While unfavorable ocean conditions may have contributed to the plunge in populations, they also highlight the continued need for habitat restoration in the North Coast watersheds where salmon breed and live for a significant period of their lives. Along with previous or on-going work in the Miami, Wilson, Trask and Kilchis watersheds, the Tillamook Bay Watershed Council is developing a restoration plan for the Tillamook River basin. Potential salmon habitat improvement projects might include riparian plantings for shade or culvert upgrades for passage.

Before getting started, however, the council will need to understand more about what limits salmon survival in the basin. The council and its partners will examine existing scientific data gathered over the past few years, as well as completing their own study of the Tillamook and its major tributaries (Fawcett, Munson, Mills, Bewley, Sutton, Joe, Beaver, Esther, Tomlinson, Simmons, and Killam creeks). The information gathered by the council will help it to suggest the best voluntary activities that may maintain or restore salmon habitat while supporting the values of landowners in the watershed.

The success of this project is largely dependent on the support of landowners within the Tillamook River basin. The council will collect data during May and June and will need many of the landowners along the Tillamook or its major tributaries to allow passage through their section of stream. The council and its partners (which include OSU Extension Service - Tillamook County) will be contacting landowners by phone or in person. If Tillamook River basin landowners have an interest in pursuing restoration work on their property, this project is an excellent opportunity to do so. For more information or to get involved with the Tillamook Bay Watershed Council, you can contact the council director, Denise Lofman at (503) 322-0002.

It’s been a little while since I’ve had time to post to H2ONC. So here’s a quick update on a few newsworthy items that North Coaster’s and other readers should pay attention to:

Due to an amazingly sharp drop off in returning fish, the Sacramento Chinook salmon fishery has been closed from fishing, essentially closing down fishing from Cape Falcon (south of Manzanita) to the San Francisco Bay Area. This is exceptionally bad news for North Coast fishermen and the communities that depend upon the roughly $15 million fishery. Senator Wyden (D-OR) is working to get a salmon disaster declared quickly so that funds are disbursed in 2008, rather than two years later with the last fishery disaster. A full news article on the closure and the fishery collapse can be found at the NY Times here and at the San Francisco Chronicle here.

Couple of other important articles that have crossed my desk in recent weeks includes a report from the National Academies of Science on climate change impacts to coastal transportation. This topic should resonate with many here as the December Storm damaged a critical rail line and made roads rough-going for more than a few weeks in the aftermath. The shorter news on this topic can be found at the New York Times here.

Lastly, World Water Day was last Friday, March 21st. While there are a plethora of “days” out there for people to commemorate everything from battles to personal causes, this one remains important–though barely audible over the drone of the news cycle and the patter of everyday life (even mine, I admit). Below is an excerpt from the National Academies of Science press release on the event. It neatly underscores why water is so critical and why World Water Day is not “just another day.”

“Today 2.6 billion people, including almost 1 billion children, live without basic sanitation. Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation, leading to 1.5 million preventable deaths each year.

The theme of this year’s World Water Day is sanitation. Organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, activities will take place around the world to raise awareness and accelerate progress toward reducing the number of people without sanitation by half over the next seven years.

The United Nations estimates it will cost $10 billion annually to halve the proportion of people without basic sanitation by 2015. If sustained, the same investment could achieve basic sanitation for the entire world within one or two decades.”

For the communities on the North Coast that are fishery or sea-life dependent, comes some disturbing news out of researchers at the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) which includes OSU. This particular posting is a reminder that climate change impacts cannot be easily predicted. The original OSU press-release reposted below can be found here.

Editor’s Note: Digital photographs to illustrate this story can be obtained at the PISCO web site at http://www.piscoweb.org/outreach/topics/hypoxia.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A review of all available ocean data records concludes that the low-oxygen events that have plagued the Pacific Northwest coast since 2002 are unprecedented in the five decades prior to that, and may well be linked to the stronger, persistent winds that are expected to occur with global warming.

In a new study to be published Friday in the journal Science, researchers from Oregon State University outline a “potential for rapid reorganization” in basic marine ecosystems and the climatic forces that drive them – and suggest that these low-oxygen, or “hypoxic” events are now more likely to be the rule rather than the exception.

“In this part of the marine environment, we may have crossed a tipping point,” said Jane Lubchenco, the Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology at OSU, and the lead scientist for PISCO, the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans.

“Levels of oxygen in the summertime have suddenly become much lower than levels in the previous 50 years,” Lubchenco said. “And 2006 broke all records, with parts of the shallow shelf actually becoming anoxic, meaning that they lacked oxygen altogether. We’ve never seen that before.”

The rapid and disturbing shift of ocean conditions in what has traditionally been one of the world’s more productive marine areas – what’s called the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem – has garnered much attention in recent years, also raising questions about whether it has happened before, and what is causing it.

“People keep asking us, ‘Is this situation really all that different or not?’” Lubchenco said. “Now we have the answer to that question, and it’s an unequivocal ‘yes.’ The low oxygen levels we’ve measured in the last six years are abnormally low for our system. We haven’t seen conditions like this in many, many decades, and now with varying intensity we’ve seen them in each of the last six summers.”

In these events, water oxygen levels have repeatedly reached hypoxic levels, below which most marine animals suffocate or are severely stressed if they cannot escape the area. If oxygen levels drop to zero, most animals die. The massive 2006 event covered at least 3,000 square kilometers, lasted for four months, and occupied up to 80 percent of the water column in shallow shelf areas, the report said. Fish either died or fled these areas, thousands of crabs died, and marine seafloor life that could not move faced almost total mortality. Recovery has been slow.

It’s less certain why this is happening, but the events are completely consistent with global climate change, the OSU researchers say.

“There have always been unusual weather events, such as hurricanes, droughts, and changes in wind patterns,” said Jack Barth, an OSU professor of physical oceanography and a lead scientist with PISCO. “So it’s difficult to prove that any one event is caused by global warming. Having said that, we expect global warming to generally cause stronger and more persistent winds. These winds contribute to the hypoxic events by increasing plankton production and holding low-oxygen water on the continental shelf for longer periods.

“At this point,” Barth added, “I’d be surprised if this trend towards hypoxic events didn’t continue.”

Francis Chan, a marine ecologist with OSU and PISCO, conducted a survey of all known records of oxygen levels on the Oregon continental shelf over the last 60 years, with measurements taken by research cruises and ocean-going vessels from more than 3,000 stations.

“The data make it pretty clear that the recent conditions are unprecedented during any period that has been measured,” Chan said. “We’re now seeing very low-oxygen water, lasting for long periods, and closer to shore than at any time in more than 50 years.”

That long period of time included several El Nino and La Nina events, possible suspects in any change of Pacific Ocean conditions, and also shifts in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, another player in near-term climate trends. None of those appeared to have any correlation to the hypoxic events.

Hypoxic conditions in ocean waters – often popularly called “dead zones” – are usually associated with serious nitrate loads or other nutrient pollution, such as in the Gulf of Mexico or Chesapeake Bay. Pollution-caused hypoxic zones are found with much less frequency in regions where significant upwelling occurs – a process that is usually beneficial to productive marine food webs.

“Coastal upwelling ecosystems occupy only about 1 percent of the ocean surface area, but they produce about 20 percent of global fishery production,” Lubchenco said. “These areas have historically been highly productive. The appearance or increase in severity of hypoxia in these ecosystems would be cause for concern.”

Some other areas of the world bear more similarity to the recent situation off the Pacific Northwest, such as the Benguela Current off South Africa and Humboldt Current off Chile. They historically have had hypoxic conditions before – which may be getting worse.

“The Namibian system in the past decade seems to be seeing lower oxygen levels and more frequent hypoxic events than it had previously,” Barth said. “Historically it has even more extreme upwelling than we have in the Pacific Northwest, and more frequent marine life die-offs.”

A concern, researchers say, is whether that system is a harbinger of the future for the Pacific Northwest.

Coastal coho salmon are what the state of Oregon and federal government call “an evolutionary significant unit” (ESU). The current status of the coastal coho ESU reflects a reduction in fishery harvest, improved hatchery management, and extensive habitat restoration work under the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds.

As recently as 2006, despite a historical plunge in numbers of fish returning to spawn in Oregon coastal streams, state and federal biologists concluded that the numbers of fish were on the upswing such that the species could be taken from the list of threatened and endangered species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA).

As an outcome of a lawsuit by Trout Unlimited and others, a Federal court ordered that NOAA Marine Fisheries Service must re-list the fish. This has some important implications for North Coast watershed councils, land managers and others, although some of our salmon runs are already ESA-listed.  You can read an article on this topic in the Oregonian by clicking here.

Important points about the coastal coho verses other species of salmon:

1. Coho use low-gradient streams for spawning.
2. Estuaries and wetlands are important for coho survival over it’s lifecycle.
3. Coho can be hatchery reared, though the survival rate of hatchery fish is often lower than wild ones.

The Oregonian has one of my colleagues from the Department of Geosciences on its front page today. Dr. Anne Nolin has studied patterns of melting and glaciation (or build up) on Mt. Hood for the last few years using remotely sensed information (satellite-gathered data primarily). While much discussion of global climate change patterns is–obviously–global, more local-scale impacts are just as important. For the average Oregonian, these are “where the rubber meets the road.” For Oregonians and other Pacific Northwesterners, it is vital to understand the direct impacts on our hydrologic (or water) cycle, especially where the water serves farms, households, cities and industries that keep the state moving. Loss of snowpack in the mountains of Oregon means less water in the summer and fall dry periods. But more important than snowpack are the glaciers that serve as massive reserves of water for some of the state’s surface waters. Dr. Nolin’s work points out just how sensitive these local glaciers are to changes in temperature.

By connecting the global with the local, Dr. Nolin’s work is scientifically significant and demonstrates an important bellwether for how Oregonians might need to prepare for changes in our climate. You can read the article here.