Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Modeling 21st Century Peak Flows In The Nooksack River Basin In Northwestern Washington State Using Dynamically-Downscaled Global Climate Model Projections, Evan A. Paul

WWU Graduate School Collection

The Nooksack River in northwestern Washington State provides freshwater for agriculture, municipal, and industrial use and serves as a vital habitat for endangered salmon, a resource that is of cultural and economic importance to the Nooksack Indian Tribe and the surrounding region. As more landscape becomes exposed to rain rather than snow and heavy winter precipitation events intensify (i.e., atmospheric rivers), peak flows and sediment delivery to streams will increase due to rapid runoff, resulting in salmon habitat degradation and increased flood risk. Thus, anticipating the effect of climate change on peak flows is crucial for salmon habitat restoration efforts …

Modeling The Effects Of Projected Climate Warming On Stream Temperatures In The Stillaguamish River Basin, Emily E. Smoot

WWU Graduate School Collection

The Stillaguamish River is a snow-and-rain mixed basin and the fifth largest river in the Puget Sound basin. Elevations in the 1700 km² Stillaguamish River basin reach roughly 2000 m and historically a snowpack is sustained above 1000 m. Snowmelt in the basin is important for sustaining spring and summer streamflow and buffering stream temperatures. Stream temperature increases are of significant concern because of the threatened Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) population.

I reexamined projected stream temperatures in the Stillaguamish River by forcing the coupled Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model and River Basin Model with dynamically downscaled meteorological …

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 …

Modeling 21st Century Peak Streamflows In The Stillaguamish Watershed Using Dynamically Downscaled General Circulation Model Projections, James Marcell Robinson

WWU Graduate School Collection

Climate change is projected to increase river flooding in the Puget Sound region of Washington State by reducing snowpack and yielding more intense storm events. Pairing meteorological forcings from general circulation models (GCMs) with a physically based hydrologic model is a robust method of assessing watershed response to projected climate. Before GCM forcings can be applied to regional hydrologic models, some form of downscaling or regionalization is required. Dynamical downscaling is a means of incorporating mesoscale atmospheric processes within GCM-informed boundary conditions. Here I apply climate projections, dynamically downscaled using the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF), to the Stillaguamish …

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 …