Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Environmental Sciences

WWU Graduate School Collection

Theses/Dissertations

Climate Change

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Species Distribution And Abundance Of Bering Sea Tunicates With Implications For Coastal Food Security, Meghan Bugaj Jan 2022

Species Distribution And Abundance Of Bering Sea Tunicates With Implications For Coastal Food Security, Meghan Bugaj

WWU Graduate School Collection

The use of sessile macroinvertebrates as leading indicators of change in marine ecosystems makes them potentially valuable as a management tool for predicting habitat suitability for more mobile, commercially important fishes. In addition to potential use as an ecosystem indicator in fisheries management, tunicates are used as a food resource by some Alaska Native communities. Variability in abundance and distribution, driven by changing physical conditions in the Bering Sea, could impact food security for these communities. I used fishery-independent NOAA survey data from the Eastern Bering Sea summer surveys from 1987 to 2019 to examine abundance and distribution of several …


Incorporating Climate Change Predictions In Ecological Risk Assessment: A Bayesian Network Relative Risk Model For Chinook Salmon In The Skagit River Watershed, Eric J. Lawrence Jan 2020

Incorporating Climate Change Predictions In Ecological Risk Assessment: A Bayesian Network Relative Risk Model For Chinook Salmon In The Skagit River Watershed, Eric J. Lawrence

WWU Graduate School Collection

Climate change is expected to have widespread impacts on future ecosystem services in the Puget Sound and around the world. It is important that climate change be included in ecological risk assessment so that changing climate variables and potential interactive effects with chemical stressors can be taken into account. In this research, I focused on the question of how water temperature changes generated by climate change interact with organophosphate pesticide toxicity to affect Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) population size in the Skagit River, WA. To answer this question, I conducted an ecological risk assessment using the Bayesian network …