The Norwest Stream Temperature Database and Climate Scenarios for Western Streams and Rivers

Climate change is warming streams across the West and threatens investments made to conserve the region’s valuable cold-water fish species. Efficient threat response requires prioritization of limited conservation resources and coordinated interagency efforts guided by accurate information about climate at scales relevant to the distributions of species across landscapes. This poster shows a high-resolution (1-kilometer) summer stream temperature map of historical conditions for 650,000 stream kilometers across six western states. The map is based on climate scenarios developed in the NorWeST project from a massive temperature database that was crowd-sourced from hundreds of individuals working for >80 state, federal, tribal, municipal, county, and private resource agencies. The stream temperature data used to develop the map consist of >45,000 summers of monitoring effort at >15,000 unique stream sites. The temperature data and climate scenarios are available in a variety of user-friendly formats through the NorWeST website (http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/boise/AWAE/projects/NorWeST.shtml) to facilitate inter-agency coordination of monitoring, aquatic climate vulnerability assessments, and research on stream temperatures and thermal ecology. The NorWeST temperature information is being rapidly adopted by the management community for decision making purposes because of its accuracy, convenience of use, and development from data collected by the people working in local landscapes.