The debates have resumed, almost before the ink was dry on the Yakima River Basin Water Storage Feasibility Study Draft Planning Report/Environmental Impact Statement issued Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Washington Department of Ecology.
The past is no longer a reliable base on which to plan the future of water management.
So says a paper by a prominent group of hydrologists and climatologists, published Thursday in Science, that calls for fundamental changes to the science behind water planning and policy.
In a laboratory at Oregon State University, some giant water bugs are swimming happily in a small aquarium — the sole survivors of a population that had survived for thousands of years in a mountain stream near Tucson, Ariz., but during a severe 2004 drought went locally extinct.
An estimated 29 percent of the nearly 1,400 historical salmon and steelhead “populations” that once that once ranged the West Coast have been lost since Euro-American appearance in California and the Pacific Northwest, according to a research paper published in the August edition of Conservation Biology.
The debates have resumed, almost before the ink was dry on the Yakima River Basin Water Storage Feasibility Study Draft Planning Report/Environmental Impact Statement issued Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Washington Department of Ecology.
The past is no longer a reliable base on which to plan the future of water management.
So says a paper by a prominent group of hydrologists and climatologists, published Thursday in Science, that calls for fundamental changes to the science behind water planning and policy.
In a laboratory at Oregon State University, some giant water bugs are swimming happily in a small aquarium — the sole survivors of a population that had survived for thousands of years in a mountain stream near Tucson, Ariz., but during a severe 2004 drought went locally extinct.
Responding appropriately to a wealth of comment on its draft Federal Columbia River Power system biological opinion will require more time than anticipated, according to the NOAA Fisheries Service.
Responding appropriately to a wealth of comment on its draft Federal Columbia River Power system biological opinion will require more time than anticipated, according to the NOAA Fisheries Service.
CBB SHORTS: Oregon Global Warming Commission; Managing Spokane Aquifer; Washington Water Quality Workshops
Melting glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, combined with other effects of global climate change, are likely to raise sea levels in parts of western Washington by the end of this century, though geological forces will offset the rising water in some areas.
Melting glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, combined with other effects of global climate change, are likely to raise sea levels in parts of western Washington by the end of this century, though geological forces will offset the rising water in some areas.
Draft documents that detail proposed actions for limiting and preparing for the impacts of climate change in Washington State are now available to public review and comment.
Draft documents that detail proposed actions for limiting and preparing for the impacts of climate change in Washington State are now available to public review and comment.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week approved the final draft of its Power Division’s “Carbon Dioxide Footprint of the Northwest Power System” paper, which charts steadily growing outputs of the greenhouse gas and details what might be done to curb that growth.
Federal officials this week said that a better scientific understanding of the fish and their needs, and an infusion of resources to meet those needs over the next 10 years, will lift 13 threatened or endangered Columbia River Basin salmon and steelhead stocks toward recovery.
NOAA Fisheries Service today released two draft biological opinions which determine that federal Columbia/Snake River hydropower and irrigation projects do not jeopardize the survival of 13 salmon and steelhead stocks that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Public comments suggested tinkering, expanded analysis and scope and other fine-tuning, but, overall, most judged the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s draft “Carbon Dioxide Footprint of the Northwest Power System” paper as a needed “dose of reality” for the region.
Researchers from Oregon State University and a variety of collaborators have been awarded more than $2.3 million in funding from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board to conduct seven separate studies involving Oregon streams and watersheds.
The rearing of steelhead trout in hatcheries causes a dramatic and unexpectedly fast drop in their ability to reproduce in the wild, a new Oregon State University study shows, and raises serious questions about the wisdom of historic hatchery practices.
Removing four lower Snake River federal hydro projects to improve conditions for salmon would be “counterproductive” to efforts to stem the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, according to a paper released Thursday by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council for public review.
Climate change research directed by the federal government has made good progress in documenting and understanding temperature trends and related environmental changes on a global scale, says a new report from the National Research Council.
The General Accounting Office, in a report released Thursday, recommends that the secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, and the Interior develop guidance incorporating agencies’ best practices, which advises managers on how to address climate change effects on the resources they manage and gather the information needed to do so.
Oregon State University will receive $20.6 million over the next six years to lead a component of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative that will be located in the Pacific Northwest’s coastal ocean.
The biological productivity and summer “upwelling” on the Pacific Northwest coast appears to be strongly correlated to oscillating jet stream patterns, according to a new study that draws definitive links between short-term ocean effects and larger climatic patterns.
An assessment of the impact of climate change on the state, being launched this week by the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group for the Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, is the most comprehensive ever.
Expansion of irrigation has masked greenhouse warming in California’s Central Valley, but irrigation may not make much of a difference in the future, according to a new study in the Aug. 13 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Washington Department of Ecology has contracted with the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group (CIG) to project how climate change will affect stream flows throughout the Columbia River Basin.
Some of the most dramatic beach erosion in the Pacific Northwest during the next 20 years may take place just north of the Columbia River jetty, where a century of shore building has ended and a major shift toward erosion has been identified.
Novel plans to remove contaminants from Columbia River basin sediments and discourage marine mammal predation on salmon are among the five “innovative,” on-the-ground fish and wildlife projects that are “highly justified” and merit immediate funding, according to the Independent Scientific Review Panel.
A burgeoning global population that includes steady Northwest growth is changing the air, water and landscape with ripple effects on fish and wildlife and their habitat.
Yet that changing landscape is little taken into account, in the Columbia River basin or elsewhere, as experts plot fish and wildlife support and recovery strategies.
The Lower Crab Creek basin in Grant County is the most viable candidate to support a new, large, off-channel water storage facility and merits a more detailed feasibility study, according to an assessment by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Washington Department of Ecology.
Western Washington University received a grant for almost $900,000 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop a model to determine the consequences of climate change on sea-level rise and river flow alteration in two of the most ecologically significant estuarine systems in Puget Sound, Padilla Bay and Skagit Bay.
Policy analyst and subbasin planning lead Tony Grover moves south of the border June 1, leaving his post with the Washington state office of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council to become director of the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Division.
Salmon and trout — coldwater fish species that get the most attention and money in the Columbia/Snake river basin — are the most vulnerable to global warming, which a new scientific report calls “unequivocal.”
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington published a paper Thursday that states habitat deterioration associated with climate change is likely to make salmon recovery in the Pacific Northwest much more difficult, especially in relatively untouched, high-elevation river basins.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire has announced the membership of the state’s new Climate Advisory Team. The team will work to find solutions climate change challenges and to maximize economic opportunities those challenges present.
Poorly managed marine fisheries are in trouble around the world, researchers say, while ecosystem-based management is a powerful idea that in theory could help ensure sustainable catches – but too often there’s a gap in translating broad concepts into specific action in the oceans that successfully meets these larger goals.
Farms in the semiarid western United States produce a large portion of the nation’s food and fiber, most with irrigation. Yet, as available water supplies shrink and competing demands for water increase, western agriculture faces an uncertain future.
The California Current system has experienced significant changes during the past decade, resulting in dramatic variations in the ecosystem characterized by shifts in phytoplankton production, expanding hypoxic zones, and the collapse of marine food webs off the western coast of the United States.
The West’s water supplies are fraught with political, economic and environmental wrangling. When devastating droughts occurred in the 1970s and the 2000s, farmers and fish alike suffered.
Yet the ability to predict stream flows in the Western United States at seasonal lead times — months or longer — is scarcely better today than it was in the 1960s.
Technology that has been field tested by tracking Columbia Basin salmon as they migrate north along the Pacific coast will be refined and expanded worldwide thanks to $45 million in grants announced Monday by Canada’s Foundation for Innovation.
Climate scientists from the Pacific Northwest, many from the University of Washington, have played key roles in the major new international study that shows climate change will have serious effects on the world in the coming decades.
A 20-year survey of conservation science shows a disturbing disconnect between the world’s most pressing ecological issues and what researchers are actually studying, with some less serious problems getting the most attention while more critical concerns get largely ignored.
Climate change is already affecting Washington’s economy, according to a study requested by the departments of Ecology and Community Trade and Economic Development that was released this week.
A Washington climate change impacts analysis will be expanded to include the entire Columbia River basin with the help of a grant approved last week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
A 10-year, satellite-based analysis has shown for the first time that primary biological productivity in the oceans – the growth of phytoplankton that forms the basis for the rest of the marine food chain – is tightly linked to climate change, and would be reduced by global warming.
It’s time for the United States to have a national climate service — an interagency partnership led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and charged with understanding climate dynamics, forecasts and impacts — say six members of the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group.
The largest and most devastating hypoxic event ever observed in marine waters off the Pacific Northwest coast has finally ended, researchers at Oregon State University say.
If you think Pacific Northwest winters are gray and rainy now, just wait.
By the end of this century winter storms are likely to be much more pronounced, particularly west of the Cascade Range, according to new University of Washington research.
Last year Mother Nature ignored expectations, providing the Columbia River Basin with a better than average snowpack and water supply to buoy fish, water crops, generate power and provide for other water uses.
Every year, blooms of the plankton that feed the marine food chain in the Pacific Ocean off the Oregon coast draw enormous quantities of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, annually negating the effects of approximately 100 million tanks of gasoline feeding greenhouse gas discharges into the air.
Northwest researchers will study the interaction of the massive Columbia River plume with the Pacific Ocean as part of a major grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a center that will be run by three Northwest institutions.
A new book of essays from more than 30 salmon scientists, policy analysts and wild salmon advocates suggesting ways to save runs of wild salmon has been published by the American Fisheries Society – and some of the prescriptions are certain to raise a few eyebrows.
Bold leadership and political compromise will be necessary if irrigators in the Yakima River Basin expect congressional approval and funding to build Black Rock Reservoir for off-stream storage.
The most severe low-oxygen ocean conditions ever observed on the West Coast of the United States have turned parts of the seafloor off Oregon into a carpet of dead Dungeness crabs and rotting sea worms, a new survey shows.
A hypoxic “dead zone” has formed off the Oregon Coast for the fifth time in five years, according to researchers at Oregon State University.
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski Thursday sent a letter to members of the Oregon congressional delegation urging them to support his efforts to have the Oregon Coast named a National Marine Sanctuary.
A temperature analysis of more than 600 boreholes from throughout the Northern Hemisphere suggests that the Earth’s climate may be warming at a higher rate than tree-ring analysis and other methods had led scientists to believe.
Long-range climate and stream-flow forecasters say they expect a warmer than normal winter, but see few hints about the type of precipitation a thirsty Pacific Northwest might receive during its precious snowpack/water accumulation season.
The future of Columbia/Snake river salmon restoration efforts drew comments ranging from gentle encouragement to threats Wednesday during closing exchanges at a Boise conference.
Harmful algal blooms that have closed shellfish harvests in the Pacific Northwest and caused “red tides” elsewhere appear to be increasing, scientists say, and the likely suspects are global climate change and increased human impact in coastal zones.
The Pacific Ocean off of Oregon has experienced a die-off of birds, declining fisheries and wildly fluctuating conditions in the past few months, and has set the stage for another hypoxic “dead zone” like those of 2002 and 2004, according to experts at Oregon State University.
A study of barnacles on the central Oregon Coast has revealed significant “hot spots” of ocean productivity where marine life has much greater reproductive potential – information that could be a key to the successful siting of marine reserves.
A $9 million federally funded research program announced last week will bolster Idaho’s ability to study critical water and aquaculture issues.
The governors of Washington, Oregon, and California this week approved a series of recommendations for action to combat global warming, and directed their staffs to continue working on state and regional goals and strategies to combat global warming over the coming year.
Scientists with expertise in climate and its impacts have developed a “consensus statement” that summarizes the likely effects of climate change on the Pacific Northwest.
The United States needs to make a new commitment to research on water resources in order to confront the increasingly severe water problems faced by all parts of the country, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies’ National Research Council.
Northwest Indian tribes have endorsed the findings of a recently released scientific study conducted as part of the Columbia River Initiative and are calling for an interstate compact to help protect instream flows for fish and wildlife.
Washington officials floated ideas at public meetings in eastern Washington the end of April outlining what they think is needed to meet future water supply needs in the mid-Columbia and Snake rivers.
Scientific opinion is overwhelming that global warming is taking place and that its effects will leave the Columbia River basin’s fish, farmers and hydro producers vulnerable, particularly in late summer, according to a University of Washington, and state of Washington, climatologist.
Global warming will diminish the amount of water stored as snow in the Western United States by up to 70 percent in the coastal mountains over the next 50 years, according to a new climate change model released last week.
The federal government should implement its revised strategic plan for climate change research as soon as possible, says a new report from the National Academies’ National Research Council.
The committee that wrote the report said the plan is “much improved,” broader in scope, and more ambitious than a previously reviewed draft, but commitments to fund many of the newly proposed activities are lacking.
NOAA Fisheries has released for public comment four preliminary drafts of “Technical Memoranda,” or “white papers” that summarize some of the key science to be used in rewriting the 2000 Biological Opinion for the federal Columbia River hydropower system.
A new, high-tech climate monitoring network designed by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists to keep tabs on the nation’s temperature and precipitation trends is set to debut nationwide in January 2004.
A new large-scale, multidisciplinary ocean exploration program would increase the pace of discovery of new species, ecosystems, energy sources, seafloor features, pharmaceutical products, and artifacts, as well as improve understanding of the role oceans play in climate change, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies’ National Research Council.
PATH updated its 1998 preliminary report
on fall chinook survival and presented those changes at last weeks meeting
of the inter-agency Implementation Team.
Though the updated report has gone through
more extensive review by PATH scientists and the Scientific Review Panel,
it lacks any defining conclusions because of wide variances in the uncertainty
of juvenile survival rates of transported fish compared to non-transported
fish, or D-value.
With a low delayed mortality, or “D” …
Three Northwest senators at subcommittee field hearing Tuesday gave
a definite thumbs down to breaching the four lower Snake River dams as
a way to restore Snake River wild salmon and steelhead runs.
Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith hosted the Hood River hearing of
the Senate Energy and Natural Resource’s Subcommittee on Water and Power,
which he chairs. Also attending were Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden;
Idaho Republican Sens. Larry Craig and Mike Crapo; and Oregon Republican
Rep.
Will the breaching of the four lower Snake River dams lead to the recovery
of endangered spring/summer chinook in the Snake River Basin?
Maybe. Maybe not. The answer depends on knowing whether the hydrosystem,
through direct and delayed mortality, is killing most of the fish or whether
it’s something else — poor ocean conditions, hatchery impacts, or multiple
factors.
On Thursday, a "Technical Forum on PATH" repeated the primary
conclusion of PATH’s 1998 Final Report — …
A $17.7 million grant award announced last week will allow researchers
from Oregon State University and three other institutions to study coastal
ecosystems on an unprecedented scale.
The goal is to produce information that may eventually help answer questions
about the causes of declining salmon populations and collapsing fisheries,
zooplankton survival and potential biological impacts of global warming.
The grant is largest ever made to a university by the David and …
Average temperatures will increase and snowpack in the Cascade Mountains will decline by up to 50 percent by mid-century, causing decreased summer and autumn stream flows in the Columbia River Basin, according to a draft report sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy that will appear in the next edition of the journal Climatic Change.
A recently completed reconnaissance level study says that it would be technically feasible to build a new water storage facility in central Washington that would effectively “meet the entire need for fish and people.”
“The economic viability of the project is more difficult to establish,” according to the Black Rock Reservoir Study final report.
Global warming will bring more rainfall to the Northwest, but it will
fall earlier in the winter and less of it will end up as snowpack. The
spring runoff will occur earlier and the normal drought that follows
winter in the Northwest will last longer resulting in very low summer
stream flows.
An amendment by Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., that would block federal
agencies from further studying proposals to breach Columbia and Snake
river federal dams has been included in Congress’ final interior
appropriations bill.
The House-Senate conference committee working on the final FY01 spending
measure voted 9-5 on Thursday to add the one-year funding restriction.
Like most farmers, Jerry Scheid grew up in an era when people thought
dams could do no wrong.
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