Identification

Title

Climate warming, water storage, and Chinook salmon in California's Sacramento Valley

Abstract

The Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) spawns and rears in the cold, freshwater rivers and tributaries of California's Central Valley, with four separate seasonal runs including fall and late-fall runs, a winter run, and a spring run. Dams and reservoirs have blocked access to most of the Chinook's ancestral spawning areas in the upper reaches and tributaries. Consequently, the fish rely on the mainstem of the Sacramento River for spawning habitat. Future climatic warming could lead to alterations of the river's temperature regime, which could further reduce the already fragmented Chinook habitat. Specifically, increased water temperatures could result in spawning and rearing temperature exceedences, thereby jeopardizing productivity, particularly in drought years. Paradoxically, water management plays a key role in potential adaptation options by maintaining spawning and rearing habitat now and in the future, as reservoirs such as Shasta provide a cold water supply that will be increasingly needed to counter the effects of climate change. Results suggest that the available cold pool behind Shasta could be maintained throughout the summer assuming median projections of mid-21st century warming of 2°C, but the maintenance of the cold pool with warming on the order of 4°C could be very challenging. The winter and spring runs are shown to be most at risk because of the timing of their reproduction.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d70z73fh

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2008-06-04T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

An edited version of this paper was published by Springer. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact