Resiliency of brook trout habitat to climate change

Climate change is predicted to extirpate many of the existing brook trout throughout their native range. Previous large-scale assessments of the effects of climate change on cold-water fishes have models that assumed a steady relationship between air and water temperature. These models may be inaccurate at smaller scales.  Our pilot study showed that the relationship between air and water temperature is 1) highly variable at the catchment scale (average size  = 237 ha), 2) potentially influenced by local conditions (i.e elevation, aspect, riparian cover, latitude, and ground water sources) and 3) is best fitted to a sigmoid curve.  These relationships can be quantified and modeled to rank existing brook trout populations for their resiliency to climate change.  We dissolved contiguous brook trout occupied catchments into patches of brook trout habitat ( n = 272; average size 2856 ha).  We placed air and water thermographs at the centroid, and downstream border of selected brook trout patches.  Data will be collected at 30 minute intervals for 17 months to include two critical summer periods (July 1-September 15). Results from sampled patches will be used to model and rank the remainder of the un-sampled patches for resiliency to climate change.