Climate Impacts on Fish and Fish Habitats: Case Studies from the Northeast Climate Science Center

The Department of Interior Northeast Climate Science Center (NE CSC) conducts research that responds to the regional natural resource management community’s needs to anticipate, monitor, and adapt to climate change. We will highlight ongoing work at the NE CSC that seeks to better understand climate impacts on freshwater and coastal fish and fish habitats.  We will report from ongoing studies on two tools that 1) integrate multi-agency stream temperature locations and data into a web-based decision support mapper to help resource managers gain an understanding of baseline conditions, historic trends, and future projections, and 2) assess the impacts of anthropogenic stressors such as land use and pollution, with potential future climate changes on stream fishes and habitats as a spatially-explicit, web-based viewer. Two Great Lakes Basin projects will demonstrate how 1) climate change is altering trophic interactions and the sustainability of commercially important fishes, and 2) spatiotemporal variability can provide statistical indicators with implications for forecasting fish population responses to climate forcing. Lastly, Structured Decision Making is being used to frame landscape-scale management decisions, incorporate multiple decision makers, and identify management strategies for northeastern headwater stream ecosystems and trust species that are robust to uncertainties induced by a changing climate.