Ben Letcher, Andrew Whiteley, Jason Coombs and Keith Nislow‘s Brook Trout Study Identifies Top Climate Change Pressure Factor

Ben Letcher, Andrew Whiteley, Jason Coombs and Keith Nislow‘s Brook Trout Study Identifies Top Climate Change Pressure Factor

Story also featured in ScienceDaily:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151130182518.htm Courtesy of UMass News & Media UMass Amherst, Forest Service, USGS scientists track more than 15,000 brook trout November 30, 2015 Contact: Janet Lathrop 413/545-0444 AMHERST, Mass. – Results from a 15-year study of factors affecting population levels of Eastern brook trout in the face of climate change show that high summer air temperatures have a large influence, in particular on the smallest fry and eggs, which are most important to wild trout abundance in streams. Co-author Ben Letcher, fisheries biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey and adjunct faculty in environmental conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, says, “It took years of sampling four streams and tracking more than 15,000 individual fish, but we feel we can account for about 90 percent of the yearly variation in abundance. The bottom line is that high summer temperatures are bad. That is unfortunate because summer air temperature is expected to increase with climate change and extreme rain is also expected to...
Read More