A single severely dry winter temporarily, but dramatically, altered the ranges of three fishes — Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead trout — in California’s northern waterways.
A single severely dry winter temporarily, but dramatically, altered the ranges of three fishes — Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead trout — in California’s northern waterways.
In a new study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biologists found that the unusually dry winter of 2013-2014 caused some salmon and steelhead to temporarily disappear from individual tributaries and even entire watersheds along the northern California coast.
“California is at the southern end of the range for several species of salmon and trout, and because of a whole host of impacts, from colonization and engineered control of western rivers to climate change, these populations have been decimated,” said study lead author Stephanie Carlson, the A.S. Leopold Chair in Wildlife Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. “Our findings provide a glimpse into how an individual extreme event can trigger the widespread and sudden collapse of multiple populations and species and potentially result in longer term range shifts.”
Read More: University of California - Berkeley
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