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Science For Kids, Parents and Teachers
The Forest Service kicked off a national “Get Outdoors”
campaign in February, to encourage children and their parents to take advantage
of recreational opportunities on national forests to develop a healthier
lifestyle and learn about conserving natural resources.
The RMRS Air, Water, and Aquatic Environments Science Program
is doing our part in educating children about our natural resources.
Get Outdoors - The Boise River
Experience
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featured Science
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Clean Water -
Insect Outbreaks and Watersheds
Mountain
pine bark beetle outbreaks are causing rapid, unprecedented change in the
headwater forests of Western North America. Infestation and mortality currently
threaten more than 80% of the basal area of many lodgepole pine dominated stands
across the West. In Colorado, bark beetle mortality now exceeds 1.5 million
acres and the outbreak is projected to ravage 85 to 90% of the mature lodgepole
ecosystems in Colorado and Wyoming within the next five years. The consequences
of this extensive canopy disturbance and subsequent management activities will
characterize western watersheds and forest landscapes for decades to come.
Briefing Paper
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Invasive Species Managing for Native Trout
Invasive Species are one of the most important threats
to the integrity of stream ecosystems. Although widely distributed, invasions
and the disruption of native communities are not universal. Understanding where
invasion risks are most important and what can be done about it will be key to
prioritization of limited management resources.
Briefing Paper
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Hyporheic
Exchange in Gravel Bed Rivers with Pool-Riffle Morphology
Hyporheic
exchange (the mixing of streamflow and shallow groundwater) is poorly understood
in gravel-bed rivers. These channels
are particularly important habitat for salmonids, many of which are currently at
risk worldwide and which incubate their offspring within the hyporheic zone.
Briefing Paper
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Detecting
Mobile Boreal Toads
Boreal Toad populations are
declining and are difficult to observe. Factors such as understanding their
ecology and developing monitoring tools are critical.
Briefing
Paper
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Remotely Assessing and Monitoring Channel Physical Habitat
NASA’s Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar (EAARL)
was used to continuously map three-dimensional channel and floodplain
topography, in streams that provide spawning habitat of a federal listed
(threatened) population of Chinook salmon. Data were acquired over 200 km of
streams in low-flow conditions with high water clarity in October, 2004, in
Idaho’s Bear Valley Creek, a tributary stream in the upper Middle Fork Salmon
River drainage.
Briefing Paper
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Bull Trout and Climate Change
Bull
trout are an ESA listed species that may be especially vulnerable to the effects
of a warming climate. As such they may be a useful biological indicator of the
effects climate change will have on mountain stream ecosystems. Understanding
threats to persistence of bull trout will help us understand threats to other
species and ecosystems —information that will be key to prioritization of
limited management resources.
Briefing Paper
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Nonnative
Fish Removal
Nonnative brook trout have invaded and replaced native
cutthroat trout in many Rocky Mountain streams. Methods to remove brook trout,
such as chemical treatment and intensive electrofishing, are expensive,
time-consuming, and sometimes controversial. An alternative technique used in
control of unwanted insects, pheromone lures and traps, may be applicable to
fish.
Briefing Paper
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GRAIP-
Quantifying and Prioritizing Road Impacts
The Geomorphic Road Assessment and Inventory
Package (GRAIP) is a process and a set of tools for analyzing the impacts of
roads on forested watersheds. GRAIP combines a road inventory with a powerful
GIS analysis tool set to predict sediment production and delivery, mass wasting
risk from gullies and landslides, stream diversion potential, culvert
maintenance and fish passage at stream crossings.
Briefing Paper
| GRAIP Website
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Air Quality
in Mountain Ecosystems - Ozone
The
monitoring of ozone in remote ecosystems is problematic, since continuous ozone
monitors need electric power to operate. Two solutions to this problem exist.
The first is to use passive samplers to estimate ozone loading. Passive samplers
utilize a chemical reaction of ozone with nitrite to form nitrate. The amount of
nitrate indicates the amount of ozone loading. Nitrite-coated filters are
exposed for 1-2 weeks and then analyzed for nitrate. The second method is to use
portable battery powered ozone monitors for continuous monitoring of ozone in
remote ecosystems.
Briefing Paper
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Spatial
and Temporal Variation in Chinook Redd Distributions
Most knowledge regarding the basic ecology of salmon comes
from studies on freshwater environments. Unfortunately, most of this knowledge
is derived from studies conducted at relatively small spatial and temporal
extents that provide a poor fit to the broader spatiotemporal themes that
underlie most species conservation efforts. Growing awareness of this gap,
combined with advances in remote sensing, spatial sampling strategies,
georeferencing capabilities, and broad usage of geographic information systems
have motivated a new generation of studies.
Briefing Paper
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Climate Change, Water, and Aquatic Ecosystems
Environmental
trends associated with a warming climate are occurring
rapidly in the Rocky Mountains. These trends will affect
the spatial and temporal distribution of water resources, habitats, and
disturbance in aquatic ecosystems. Threats from reduced
runoff, increased flow variability, increased temperature, increased wildfires,
lost snowpack storage, and reduced vegetation cover affect water users and
aquatic biota alike. The complex challenges posed by climate warming will
require proactive, informed management if significant alteration of aquatic
systems is to be avoided.
Briefing Paper
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Fire,
Fuel Management, and Aquatic Ecosystems
Wildfires dramatically change watersheds, yielding floods and
debris flows that endanger water supplies, human lives, and valuable fish
habitats. Fuel management is intended to mitigate the effects of wildfire but
poses risks to water quality and aquatic habitat. Solutions are needed for
simultaneous restoration of forests and aquatic ecosystems. Although the problem
is typically cast as a tradeoff between management actions like fuel reduction,
fire suppression, and emergency stabilization versus wildfire, new ideas about
appropriate management response to wildfire require understanding how to build
resilient ecosystems. There is a need for strategic restoration that addresses
terrestrial as well as aquatic needs.
Briefing Paper
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Bull Trout and Climate Change - Risks, Uncertainties and Opportunities for
Mapping the Future
Bull trout are a federally listed, native charr species
distributed throughout the Pacific Northwest. Among the critical requirements
for this species are a need for large, interconnected habitats of cold water.
Much uncertainty exists regarding the future of bull trout and their habitats
given environmental trends associated with a warming climate and increasing fire
activity. Presentations at this symposium provide an overview of bull trout,
their relationship to climate, and alternatives for modeling future habitat and
population distributions.
Videos and Abstracts
of the 2008 Western Division
Meeting of the American Fisheries Society
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Stream Temperature Modeling
Stream thermal regimes are important within regulatory
contexts and strongly affect aquatic ecosystems. Numerous approaches have been
developed for modeling stream temperatures, but broad application of these
models to USFS lands has been constrained by data limitations and poor
predictive ability. RMRS scientists have developed an approach to modeling
stream temperatures that requires a minimum of field effort by using existing
temperature records in combination with GIS and remote sensing technologies. The
approach is being applied in a central Idaho watershed to map thermal habitat
networks for native fish species, but could also be used to forecast future
habitat distributions, improve understanding of factors affecting stream
temperatures, determine compliance with water quality standards, or optimize
temperature sampling strategies.
Briefing Paper
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Stream Temperature Modeling
Website
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Monitoring Bull Trout Populations
Bull trout are native to much of the Pacific Northwest, but
population declines during the 20th century prompted listing under the
Endangered Species Act. Several national forests have also selected bull trout
as a Management Indicator Species, which makes monitoring a priority. Monitoring
protocols have traditionally focused on tracking site level abundance, but these
approaches can be costly to apply across broad areas and are being replaced in
some instances by distributional monitoring. Researchers at the Boise Aquatic
Sciences Lab have adapted distributional approaches for bull trout to create a
monitoring protocol that can be applied rapidly and inexpensively while
providing powerful trend detection across broader areas relevant to land
management.
Briefing Paper
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A Watershed-scale Monitoring Protocol for Bull Trout (RMRS-GTR-224)
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The Research Analysis and Technology Transfer Team (RATT)
provides support for the AWAE Boise scientists during the entire research cycle. Some
examples include GIS and remote sensing analysis, database design and
management, web development and programming.
Briefing Paper |
Team Information
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Technology Transfer Program - R1/R4/R6/RMRS
The USDA-USFS Boise Aquatic Sciences Lab
Technology Transfer program, a shared program established in 1990 between the
Rocky Mountain Research Station, and the Intermountain and Northern Regions, is
focusing on defining, developing and delivering science and technical tools to
assist aquatic practitioners, land managers and their partners address aquatic
issues of today and into the future.
Briefing Paper
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