Spatially-Explicit Tools to Guide Climate-Smart Restoration Efforts for Native Trout

Climate change is projected to increase stream temperatures, alter flow regimes, and adversely affect native trout distributions.  In addition to improving contemporary habitat conditions, many stream restoration practices - such as restoring riparian vegetation, habitat diversity, or environmental flows - also have the potential to offset climate change impacts by increasing ecosystem resilience.  As a result, practitioners must not only prioritize projects based on current conservation needs, but they must also consider how aquatic habitats and species distributions will change under future climates.  Doing so will ensure contemporary projects have long-lasting benefits.  We present a spatially-explicit decision support system that can be used to identify appropriate management interventions for native cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii) populations while simultaneously considering how projected climate change will impact future aquatic habitats and trout distributions.  As we show, spatially explicit decision support tools can allow practitioners to effectively identify the most appropriate management interventions for individual trout populations, while also informing which populations should be prioritized for such interventions.  Such tools allow prioritization of restoration projects that are climate smart so that conservation benefits can be realized both now as well as into the future.