Preparing for Climatic Change: The Water, Salmon, and Forests of the Pacific Northwest

The impacts of year-to-year and decade-to-decade climatic variations on some of the Pacific Northwest's key natural resources can be quantified to estimate sensitivity to regional climatic changes expected as part of anthropogenic global climatic change. Warmer, drier years, often associated with El Niño events and/or the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, tend to be associated with below-average snowpack, streamflow, and flood risk, below-average salmon survival, below-average forest growth, and above-average risk of forest fire. During the 20th century, the region experienced a warming of 0.8 °C. Using output from eight climate models, we project a further warming of 0.5–2.5 °C (central estimate 1.5 °C) by the 2020s, 1.5–3.2°C (2.3 °C) by the 2040s, and an increase in precipitation except in summer. The foremost impact of a warming climate will be the reduction of regional snowpack, which presently supplies water for ecosystems and human uses during the dry summers. Our understanding of past climate also illustrates the responses of human management systems to climatic stresses, and suggests that a warming of the rate projected would pose significant challenges to the management of natural resources. Resource managers and planners currently have few plans for adapting to or mitigating the ecological and economic effects of climatic change.     

Sediment resuspension and transport in Lake Michigan during the unstratified period

Instrumented moorings were deployed during the winter of 1994–95 at three depths (28, 58 and 101 m) in southern Lake Michigan. Storms during the observation period were not unusually severe, so the processes observed are typical of those that occur during an average winter. Time series observations of water temperature, beam attenuation coefficient (a measure of water transparency) and current velocity show that local resuspension of bottom sediment occurred frequently after the breakdown of the thermocline. Resuspension was most frequent close to the shore but was also observed at the 58 m station. Local resuspension did not occur at the 101 m station, but advection to the site of material resuspended at shallower sites was observed. These observations do not support the hypothesis proposed by previous investigators that local resuspension at depths of 100 m or greater occurs during the unstratified period. It is more likely that fine-grained material resuspended by storm action in intermediate water depths (≈ 30–60 m) is transported into the deeper parts of the lake by the general lake circulation.