Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Quantifying Thermal Refugia Connectivity By Combining Temperature Modeling, Distributed Temperature Sensing, And Thermal Infrared Imaging, Jessica R. Dzara, Bethany T. Neilson, Sarah E. Null

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Watershed-scale stream temperature models are often one-dimensional because they require fewer data and are more computationally efficient than two- or three-dimensional models. However, one-dimensional models assume completely mixed reaches and ignore small-scale spatial temperature variability, which may create temperature barriers or refugia for cold-water aquatic species. Fine spatial- and temporal-resolution stream temperature monitoring provides information to identify river features with increased thermal variability. We used distributed temperature sensing (DTS) to observe small-scale stream temperature variability, measured as a temperature range through space and time, within two 400 m reaches in summer 2015 in Nevada's East Walker and main stem Walker …