Risks of mining to salmonid-bearing watersheds.

Mining provides resources for people but can pose risks to ecosystems that support cultural keystone species. Our synthesis reviews relevant aspects of mining operations, describes the ecology of salmonid-bearing watersheds in northwestern North America, and compiles the impacts of metal and coal extraction on salmonids and their habitat. We conservatively estimate that this region encompasses nearly 4000 past producing mines, with present-day operations ranging from small placer sites to massive open-pit projects that annually mine more than 118 million metric tons of earth.

Climate change and expanding invasive species drive widespread declines of native trout in the northern Rocky Mountains, USA.

Climate change and invasive species are major threats to native biodiversity, but few empirical studies have examined their combined effects at large spatial and temporal scales. Using 21,917 surveys collected over 30 years, we quantified the impacts of climate change on the past and future distributions of five interacting native and invasive trout species throughout the northern Rocky Mountains, USA. We found that the occupancy of native bull trout and cutthroat trout declined by 18 and 6%, respectively (1993–2018), and was predicted to decrease by an additional 39 and 16% by 2080.

Glacier retreat creating new Pacific salmon habitat in western North America.

Glacier retreat poses risks and benefits for species of cultural and economic importance. One example is Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.), supporting subsistence harvests, and commercial and recreational fisheries worth billions of dollars annually.

Glacier Retreat and Pacific Salmon.

Glaciers have shaped past and present habitats for Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) in North America. During the last glacial maximum, approximately 45% of the current North American range of Pacific salmon was covered in ice.

Accounting for adaptive capacity and uncertainty in assessments of species' climate-change vulnerability.

Climate-change vulnerability assessments (CCVAs) are valuable tools for assessing species' vulnerability to climatic changes, yet failure to include measures of adaptive capacity and to account for sources of uncertainty may limit their effectiveness. We took a more comprehensive approach that incorporates exposure, sensitivity, and capacity to adapt to climate change. We applied our approach to anadromous steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and nonanadromous bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus), threatened salmonids within the Columbia River Basin (U.

Climate variables explain neutral and adaptive variation within salmonid metapopulations: the importance of replication in landscape genetics.

Understanding how environmental variation influences population genetic structure is important for conservation management because it can reveal how human stressors influence population connectivity, genetic diversity and persistence. We used riverscape genetics modelling to assess whether climatic and habitat variables were related to neutral and adaptive patterns of genetic differentiation (population-specific and pairwise FST ) within five metapopulations (79 populations, 4583 individuals) of steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in the Columbia River Basin, USA. Using 151 putatively neutral and 29 candidate adaptive SNP loci, we found that climate-related variables (winter precipitation, summer maximum temperature, winter highest 5% flow events and summer mean flow) best explained neutral and adaptive patterns of genetic differentiation within metapopulations, suggesting that climatic variation likely influences both demography (neutral variation) and local adaptation (adaptive variation).

Genetic diversity is related to climatic variation and vulnerability in threatened bull trout.

Understanding how climatic variation influences ecological and evolutionary processes is crucial for informed conservation decision-making. Nevertheless, few studies have measured how climatic variation influences genetic diversity within populations or how genetic diversity is distributed across space relative to future climatic stress. Here, we tested whether patterns of genetic diversity (allelic richness) were related to climatic variation and habitat features in 130 bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) populations from 24 watersheds (i.

Performance of salmon fishery portfolios across western North America.

Quantifying the variability in the delivery of ecosystem services across the landscape can be used to set appropriate management targets, evaluate resilience and target conservation efforts. Ecosystem functions and services may exhibit portfolio-type dynamics, whereby diversity within lower levels promotes stability at more aggregated levels. Portfolio theory provides a framework to characterize the relative performance among ecosystems and the processes that drive differences in performance.

Climate, hydrologic disturbance, and succession: drivers of floodplain pattern.

Floodplains are among the world's most threatened ecosystems due to the pervasiveness of dams, levee systems, and other modifications to rivers. Few unaltered floodplains remain where we may examine their dynamics over decadal time scales. Our study provides a detailed examination of landscape change over a 60-year period (1945-2004) on the Nyack floodplain of the Middle Fork of the Flathead River, a free-flowing, gravel-bed river in northwest Montana, USA.