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Null SE, Zeff H, Mount J, Gray B, Sturrock AM, Sencan G, Dybala K, Thompson B. Storing and managing water for the environment is more efficient than mimicking natural flows. Nat Commun 2024; 15:5462. [PMID: 38937466 PMCID: PMC11211385 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49770-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/19/2023] [Accepted: 06/12/2024] [Indexed: 06/29/2024] Open
Abstract
Dams and reservoirs are often needed to provide environmental water and maintain suitable water temperatures for downstream ecosystems. Here, we evaluate if water allocated to the environment, with storage to manage it, might allow environmental water to more reliably meet ecosystem objectives than a proportion of natural flow. We use a priority-based water balance operations model and a reservoir temperature model to evaluate 1) pass-through of a portion of reservoir inflow versus 2) allocating a portion of storage capacity and inflow for downstream flow and stream temperature objectives. We compare trade-offs to other senior and junior priority water demands. In many months, pass-through flows exceed the volumes needed to meet environmental demands. Storage provides the ability to manage release timing to use water efficiently for environmental benefit, with a co-benefit of increasing reservoir storage to protect cold-water at depth in the reservoir.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sarah E Null
- Department of Watershed Sciences, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA.
- Water Policy Center, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
| | - Harrison Zeff
- Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
| | - Jeffrey Mount
- Water Policy Center, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Brian Gray
- Water Policy Center, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Anna M Sturrock
- School of Life Sciences, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, UK
| | - Gokce Sencan
- Water Policy Center, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | | | - Barton Thompson
- Stanford Law School & Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA
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Koeberle AL, Pearsall W, Hammers BE, Mulhall D, McKenna JE, Chalupnicki M, Sethi SA. Whole-lake acoustic telemetry to evaluate survival of stocked juvenile fish. Sci Rep 2023; 13:18956. [PMID: 37919328 PMCID: PMC10622427 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-46330-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/19/2023] [Accepted: 10/30/2023] [Indexed: 11/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Estimates of juvenile survival are critical for informing population dynamics and the ecology of fish, yet these demographic parameters are difficult to measure. Here, we demonstrate that advances in animal tracking technology provide opportunities to evaluate survival of juvenile tagged fish. We implemented a whole-lake telemetry array in conjunction with small acoustic tags (including tags < 1.0 g) to track the fate of stocked juvenile cisco (Coregonus artedi) as part of a native species restoration effort in the Finger Lakes region of New York, USA. We used time-to-event modeling to characterize the survival function of stocked fish, where we infer mortality as the cessation of tag detections. Survival estimates revealed distinct stages of juvenile cisco mortality including high immediate post-release mortality, followed by a period of elevated mortality during an acclimation period. By characterizing mortality over time, the whole-lake biotelemetry effort provided information useful for adapting stocking practices that may improve survival of stocked fish, and ultimately the success of the species reintroduction effort. The combination of acoustic technology and time-to-event modeling to inform fish survival may have wide applicability across waterbodies where receiver arrays can be deployed at scale and where basic assumptions about population closure can be satisfied.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander L Koeberle
- New York Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, Cornell University, Fernow Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA.
| | - Webster Pearsall
- New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Fish, Wildlife, and Marine Resources, Region 8 - Rochester/Western Finger Lakes, Avon, NY, 14414, USA
| | - Brad E Hammers
- New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Fish, Wildlife, and Marine Resources, Region 8 - Rochester/Western Finger Lakes, Avon, NY, 14414, USA
| | - Daniel Mulhall
- New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Fish, Wildlife, and Marine Resources, Region 8 - Rochester/Western Finger Lakes, Avon, NY, 14414, USA
| | - James E McKenna
- U.S. Geological Survey, Great Lakes Science Center, Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Science, 3075 Gracie Road, Cortland, NY, 13045, USA
| | - Marc Chalupnicki
- U.S. Geological Survey, Great Lakes Science Center, Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Science, 3075 Gracie Road, Cortland, NY, 13045, USA
| | - Suresh A Sethi
- New York Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, Cornell University, Fernow Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA
- Aquatic Research and Environmental Assessment Center, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Brooklyn College, 123 Ingersoll Hall, Brooklyn, NY, 11210, USA
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Munsch SH, Greene CM, Mantua NJ, Satterthwaite WH. One hundred-seventy years of stressors erode salmon fishery climate resilience in California's warming landscape. GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY 2022; 28:2183-2201. [PMID: 35075737 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16029] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/05/2021] [Revised: 11/12/2021] [Accepted: 11/25/2021] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
People seek reliable natural resources despite climate change. Diverse habitats and biologies stabilize productivity against disturbances like climate, prompting arguments to promote climate-resilient resources by prioritizing complex, less-modified ecosystems. These arguments hinge on the hypothesis that simplifying and degrading ecosystems will reduce resources' climate resilience, a process liable to be cryptically evolving across landscapes and human generations, but rarely documented. Here, we examined the industrial era (post 1848) of California's Central Valley, chronicling the decline of a diversified, functional portfolio of salmon habitats and life histories and investigating for empirical evidence of lost climate resilience in its fishery. Present perspectives indicate that California's dynamic, warming climate overlaid onto its truncated, degraded habitat mosaic severely constrains its salmon fishery. We indeed found substantial climate constraints on today's fishery, but this reflected a shifted ecological baseline. During the early stages of a stressor legacy that transformed the landscape and -- often consequently -- compressed salmon life history expression, the fishery diffused impacts of dry years across a greater number of fishing years and depended less on cool spring-summer transitions. The latter are important given today's salmon habitats, salmon life histories, and resource management practices, but are vanishing with climate change while year-to-year variation in fishery performance is rising. These findings give empirical weight to the idea that human legacies influence ecosystems' climate resilience across landscapes and boundaries (e.g., land/sea). They also raise the question of whether some contemporary climate effects are recent and attributable not only to increasing climate stress, but to past and present human actions that erode resilience. In general, it is thus worth considering that management approaches that prioritize complex, less-modified ecosystems may stabilize productivity despite increasing climate stress and such protective actions may be required for some ecological services to persist into uncertain climate futures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stuart H Munsch
- Ocean Associates Inc., Under Contract to Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, Seattle, Washington, USA
| | - Correigh M Greene
- Fish Ecology Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, Seattle, Washington, USA
| | - Nathan J Mantua
- Fisheries Ecology Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, Santa Cruz, California, USA
| | - William H Satterthwaite
- Fisheries Ecology Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, Santa Cruz, California, USA
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Nobriga ML, Michel CJ, Johnson RC, Wikert JD. Coldwater fish in a warm water world: Implications for predation of salmon smolts during estuary transit. Ecol Evol 2021; 11:10381-10395. [PMID: 34367582 PMCID: PMC8328468 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.7840] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/01/2020] [Revised: 06/07/2021] [Accepted: 06/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/05/2022] Open
Abstract
Predator-prey systems face intensifying pressure from human exploitation and a warming climate with implications for where and how natural resource management can successfully intervene. We hypothesized young salmon migrating to the Pacific Ocean face a seasonally intensifying predator gauntlet when warming water temperature intensifies a multiple predator effect (MPE) from Striped Bass Morone saxatilis and Largemouth Bass Micropterus salmoides. We evaluated this hypothesis using data synthesis and simulation modeling.Contemporary studies based on acoustically tagged fish reaffirmed older observations that Chinook Salmon smolts must transit the Delta before water temperature reaches 20°C or mortality will be nearly 100%. Striped Bass attack rates on tethered smolts were insensitive to distance from shore and water temperature, whereas Largemouth Bass attack rates were highest near shorelines in warm water, supporting the temporal aspect of the hypothesis. Whether the combined effects of the two predators produce an MPE remains unconfirmed due to limitations on quantifying salmon behavior.We used multiple simulation models to try to reconstruct the empirical relationship between smolt survival and water temperature. Simulations reinforced attack rate results, but could not recreate the temperature dependence in smolt survival except at higher than observed temperatures. We propose three hypotheses for why and recommend discerning among them should be a focus of research.We found significant linear relationships between monthly mean inflow to the Delta from each of its two largest tributaries and monthly mean water temperatures along associated salmon migration routes, but these relationships can be nonlinear, with most of the correlation occurring at low inflows when water temperature is largely controlled by air temperature and day length. As the global climate warms, changed circumstances in predator-prey relationships may present important challenges when managing species vulnerable to extinction in addition to presently more abundant species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew L. Nobriga
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service San Francisco Bay‐Delta Fish and Wildlife OfficeSacramentoCAUSA
| | - Cyril J. Michel
- National Marine Fisheries ServiceSouthwest Fisheries Science CenterSanta CruzCAUSA
| | - Rachel C. Johnson
- Center for Watershed SciencesNational Marine Fisheries ServiceSouthwest Fisheries Science CenterDavisCAUSA
| | - John D. Wikert
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Lodi Fish and Wildlife OfficeLodiCAUSA
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