Descriptions of data produced by the project entitled “Incorporating Spatial Heterogeneity in Temperature into Climate Vulnerability Assessments for Coastal Pacific Streams” by Fullerton, Lawler, Lee, and Torgersen, 2017.
Data are organized into three main folders: ‘Tabular’, which contains data tables, ‘Shapefiles’, which contains geospatial data, and ‘Images’, which contains maps and plots. The file structure and content descriptions are provided below.
/Tabular:
For each subfolder, a metadata file (“_Metadata_xxxx.csv”) describes the data and fields.
/TIR: Thermal infrared (TIR) remotely sensed data for individual river surveys. Data were extracted from TIR shapefile attribute tables (see /Shapefiles/OriginalTIR).
/Results:
/DHSVM-RBM: Results from the coupled hydrology-water temperature modeling in the Snoqualmie and Siletz watersheds.
/RandomForest: Results from random forest statistical modeling for each river >20 km long for which we had TIR data.
/TIR_Patches: Results from the analysis assessing characteristics of cold patches in the entire NPLCC domain for which we had TIR data, and in the Snoqualmie and Siletz watersheds.
/Shapefiles:
Metadata are associated with shapefies in /NetMapTIR and /NorWeST but were not provided for those in /OriginalTIR.
/NetMapTIR: NetMap ‘reach’ dataset, clipped to include only the reaches where TIR data exist. Note, some rivers are not represented. Source: NetMap. 2016. Virtual watershed and analysis tools. TerrainWorks Inc. www.terrainworks.com. We have added new fields to the attribute table from analyses described in the project completion report and further defined in ‘_Metadata_Shapefile_Fields.csv’. Additional attributes for the reach datasets are available from TerrainWorks.
/NorWeST: Stream reaches from the NorWeST dataset, clipped to include only the reaches where TIR data exist. Source: Isaak, D.J.; Wenger, S.J.; Peterson, E.E.; Ver Hoef, J.M.; Hostetler, S.W.; Luce, C.H.; Dunham, J.B.; Kershner, J.L.; Roper, B.B.; Nagel, D.E.; Chandler, G.L.; Wollrab, S.P.; Parkes, S.L.; Horan, D.L. 2016. NorWeST modeled summer stream temperature scenarios for the western U.S. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2016-0033.
Not used in analysis, but provided for reference are also the NHDPlus Version 2 reaches, clipped to include only reaches were TIR data exist. Source: McKay, L., T. Bondelid, T. Dewald, A. Rea, and R. Moore. 2012. NHD Plus Verion 2: User Guide. Application-ready geospatial framework of U.S. surface-water data products associated with the USGS National Hydrography Dataset. URL http://www.horizon-systems.com/NHDPlus/NHDPlusV2_home.php
/OriginalTIR: The original shapefiles produced for individual rivers surveyed with airborne remote sensing to assess water temperature. Organized by major rivers and state, and years the surveys were flown. For example, “Scott_CA_2006” was a survey of the Scott River, California, in 2006. Subfolders hold data for individual surveys within the larger basin (e.g., “scott”, “shackleford”, which hold surveys on the Scott and Shackleford rivers, respectively). Each root folder also has a .PDF of the final report produced by Watershed Sciences Inc. (now Quantum Spatial), the company that conducted the survey and produced the attributed shapefiles. These reports have useful information for interpreting the data, weather conditions during the flight, and figures showing some of two-dimensional imagery.
/Images:
/DHSVM-RBM: Figures produced from coupled hydrology-water temperature modeling in the Snoqualmie and Siletz river watersheds. File names describe plot contents; see also /Tabular/Results/DHSVM/_Metadata_DHSVM.csv.
/Maps: Maps of cold-water habitat, displayed as river temperatures <15 ˚C (file names with ‘_15’), and as gradients of downstream cooling and warming at a spatial resolution of 100m (file names with ‘G100’). Reaches displayed are from NetMap.
/NorWeST_TIR_Profiles: Plots for individual rivers in which longitudinal profiles are plotted using both NorWeST predictions and TIR data.
PUBLIC SUMMARY FROM THE COMPLETION REPORT:
Water temperature, a key driver of ecological processes in aquatic environments, is expected to warm as a result of climate change, stressing stream biota. Successful climate adaptation strategies will consider changes to spatial patterns in water temperature. We analyzed water temperature for 6,106 km of rivers to evaluate the characteristics of cold-water habitat for Pacific salmon and steelhead within the NPLCC. We used a dataset of river surface temperature measured using airborne thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing and multiple models to: (1) characterize thermal heterogeneity in rivers, (2) assess potential future thermal heterogeneity, and (3) illustrate salmon vulnerability in the Snoqualmie (Washington) and Siletz (Oregon) river watersheds. We found that cool-water habitat was prevalent at higher elevations and latitudes. Cool patch distribution and characteristics were specific to each river, but cool patches were generally larger and closer together upstream. Thermal heterogeneity was present at scales <1 km, which was only discoverable when using the nearly spatially-continuous TIR data, and likely could not have been predicted using models. As waters warm, the current distribution of cool patches will change, with downstream cool patches disappearing and warmer patches bisecting previously cool patches upstream. The vulnerability analysis suggested that thermal habitat conditions in August are already stressful and will remain so for salmon and steelhead in the Snoqualmie watershed. In the Siletz watershed, numerous cold patches previously accessible to salmon in the lower river reaches may disappear, making migration potentially more difficult in the future. Findings and datasets produced during this project will help resource managers in their quest to protect “sufficiently distributed” thermal refuges for Pacific salmon and steelhead, to identify locations where stream temperature patterns may be least/most responsive to climate change, and actions that will promote future thermal diversity best suited for conserving salmon and other aquatic resources.
