Mote, Phillip W., Edward A Parson, Alan F. Hamlet, William S. Keeton, Dennis Lettenmaier, Nathan Mantua, Edward L. Miles, David W. Peterson, David L Peterson, Richard Slaughter, and Amy K. Snover. “Preparing for Climatic Change: The Water, Salmon, and Forests of the Pacific Northwest.” Climatic Change 61 (2003): 45-88. (reviewed by Martin Anderson)
Summary:
The purpose of this review article is to analyze the climatic and ecological conditions of the Pacific Northwest including the whole Columbia River Basin now and in the future. The authors outline the current, historical, and projected future conditions of the water, salmon, and forests of the Columbia River Basin in relation to climate change. Among the authors are climate specialists, biologists, and geologists who have published on current and future conditions in the Columbia River Basin over the last ten years and have acted to raise awareness of problems in the Basin related to climatic change specifically global warming.
The authors detail the known history of the Northwest's hydrology and salmon including the effects of the Pacific-Decadal Oscillation and El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The current hydrological state of the region is one of human usage versus the needs of the environment with enough water to go around for now. Climate change will affect the hydrological process in the region by increasing winter precipitation and lowering the total rainfall in the summer months. This could lead to problems with water shortages between the maintenance of river levels in the region. The change in hydrology would adversely affect the already threatened state of the Pacific salmon which are hatched and return to the region mostly via the Columbia River . Additionally, changing temperatures may create undesirable thermal conditions for the survival of salmon.
The situation of the forests is equally tenuous with potential major changes on the way due to global warming. As temperature increase the range of most plants and animals in the region is shifted northward with any remaining plants hopefully able to adapt the changes. The authors discuss the various adaptation that plant, animal, and humans are capable of or will have to make in order to ensure that the region does not change significantly.
The authors offer up a host of potential solutions to the problems faced by the Northwest due to global climate change. These range from people conserving water to restoration projects to trying to stop the problem at its source and find ways to reverse or mitigate the effects of global climate change. They conclude that the current condition of the region is acceptable, but within a few decades the ecology, hydrology, and human use will change as an effect of global warming.
Critique:
This article provides a detailed look at the whole of the Columbia River Basin and how is currently and will potentially be affected by global climate change. The article is well written and very comprehensive. The charts used really help to break down large chunks of information into a fairly usable package. The way the authors broke down each topic into a history, current condition, and future potential conditions made reading the text easier.
Looking at the whole of the region surrounding the Basin provides a bigger picture of the breadth of the problems facing the Basin. The problems of hydrology and forest survival in the Northwest are equally valid in California or Florida or Brazil . This article act to whittle down a larger global problem into manageable pieced so that one can see that climate change is linked to forest survival which has a lot to do with hydrology that effects river biology which influences how the forests grow. All of these things are connected.
This article would be useful for anyone looking to understand the current climate research in the Columbia River Basin and how projected climate change will affect the biology and hydrology of the basin. This article consists of 44 pages, 1 table, 11 figures, and 71 references.
Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon
HC 441: Science Colloquium, Columbia River Ecology
Fall term, 2005
Send e-mail to the Webmaster