Quantifying Future Freshwater Hazard Exposure for Pacific Salmon in British Columbia

The changing climate in British Columbia (BC) is expected to affect various hydrological factors pertinent to salmon growth, survival, and habitat interconnectivity, leading to changes in species distribution at broad spatial scales. Mitigating the threats to salmonids requires action to protect genetic diversity to ensure the greatest potential for adaptation to changing climatic conditions. As the climate continues to warm, more information will be required to support actions to protect wild salmon and associated habitat. To be effective, there needs to be a concerted effort to bridge the significant knowledge gaps that remain regarding the nature and magnitude of regional impacts of climate change on hydrology in many BC watersheds.

To this end, researchers from the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), in collaboration with scientists from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), have recently completed a project to better understand how climate change may affect terrestrial freshwater environments in which salmon populations are found. Flow and thermal exposure indicators have been produced that capture and quantify historical and potential future freshwater hazards over a large spatial domain and at multiple temporal scales (daily, weekly, and monthly). This knowledge will be delivered to a broad range of users via the Salmon Climate Impacts Portal (SCIP), which is an online tool developed at PCIC to locate, visualize, summarise, and download summary data describing projected changes to salmon exposure in the freshwater environment within the BC Coastal domain. The intended use of this tool is for conducting regional population- and watershed-based exposure summaries. We believe that this data, and associated tool, will support assessments of ecological vulnerability to climate change across diverse salmon habitats and populations.

Bios:

As Lead of PCIC’s Hydrologic Impacts Theme, Markus Schnorbus is responsible for planning and managing PCIC’s effort to quantify the effects of climate change on hydrological processes throughout the PCIC domain. This work involves continual development and deployment of state-of-the-science modelling tools, the generation of hydrologic projections to keep pace with the latest climate projections, and analysis and interpretation of model outputs in response to stakeholder-driven questions and issues. It also includes the delivery of data, information and tools to facilitate adaptation and risk reduction in support of water resources planning and management activities.”

Lee Zeman is a Hydrologic Programmer/Analyst with the Computational Support Group at the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, working under the British Columbia Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund. His main focus is developing web tools to enable exploration and analysis of climate data.