Land and Water Management to Sustain Lake Superior Tributaries in a Changing Climate

Climate change is a serious threat to the freshwater ecosystems in Minnesota’s Lake Superior tributary streams. To develop long-term strategies to address these threats, a new project is underway to develop tools for classifying these ecosystems, and to predict their hydrologic and ecological responses to climate and land use changes.  A regional stream classification is being developed based on catchment and reach physical characteristics, and biological data. Hydrologic models are being used to characterize current hydrologic conditions in gaged and ungaged watersheds, and to determine how different classes of streams will respond to future climate and land cover scenarios.  From the models, regional flow-ecology relationships are being developed to identify critical stream flow parameters for maintaining good habitat for native fish species such as brook trout.  Based on the projected flow metrics and ecological responses, the relative vulnerability and resilience of each stream class will be determined. Land and water management opportunities will be identified in cooperation with local, regional, and state-level managers. This presentation will emphasize the work on catchment-level and regional hydrologic models for the Lake Superior North Shore tributaries, and preliminary results for the flow responses of these ecosystems to climate change scenarios.