Climate vulnerability assessment for Pacific salmon and steelhead in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem.

Major ecological realignments are already occurring in response to climate change. To be successful, conservation strategies now need to account for geographical patterns in traits sensitive to climate change, as well as climate threats to species-level diversity. As part of an effort to provide such information, we conducted a climate vulnerability assessment that included all anadromous Pacific salmon and steelhead (Oncorhynchus spp.

Size-conditional smolting and the response of Carmel River steelhead to two decades of conservation efforts.

Threshold effects are common in ecosystems and can generate counterintuitive outcomes in management interventions. A threshold effect proposed for steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is size-conditional smolting and marine survival. Steelhead are anadromous, maturing in the ocean but migrating to freshwater to spawn, where their offspring reside for one or more years before smolting-physiologically transforming to a saltwater form-and migrating to the ocean.

Seasonal weather patterns drive population vital rates and persistence in a stream fish.

Climate change affects seasonal weather patterns, but little is known about the relative importance of seasonal weather patterns on animal population vital rates. Even when such information exists, data are typically only available from intensive fieldwork (e.g.

Incorporating climate science in applications of the US endangered species act for aquatic species.

Aquatic species are threatened by climate change but have received comparatively less attention than terrestrial species. We gleaned key strategies for scientists and managers seeking to address climate change in aquatic conservation planning from the literature and existing knowledge. We address 3 categories of conservation effort that rely on scientific analysis and have particular application under the U.

Floodplain rehabilitation as a hedge against hydroclimatic uncertainty in a migration corridor of threatened steelhead.

A strategy for recovering endangered species during climate change is to restore ecosystem processes that moderate effects of climate shifts. In mid-latitudes, storm patterns may shift their intensity, duration, and frequency. These shifts threaten flooding in human communities and reduce migration windows (conditions suitable for migration after a storm) for fish.

The Dispersal System of a Butterfly: A Test of Source-Sink Theory Suggests the Intermediate-Scale Hypothesis.

Theory predicts source-sink dynamics can occur in species with the ideal preemptive distribution but not with the ideal free distribution. Source-sink dynamics can also occur in species with passive dispersal, in which a fixed fraction of the population disperses each generation. However, in nature, dispersal often approximates random diffusion rather than ideal choices or fixed probabilities.