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Air, Water and Aquatic Environments Science Program - Research Projects

Water | Climate Change | Sediment & Erosion

Atmospheric Deposition | Aquatic Ecology | Watershed Processes

 

For a simple list by titles, please see the site map.

 

featured Projects

River Bathymetry Toolkit (RBT)

Traditional techniques for describing and understanding aquatic physical habitat in streams have focused on manual measurements of channel topography. New remote sensing techniques, such as airborne water-penetrating Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and boat-mounted acoustic sensors can produce highly accurate Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) with continuous coverage of long segments of channels and stream networks. The US Forest Service and ESSA Technologies have developed a suite of GIS tools, the River Bathymetry Toolkit (RBT), for processing high resolution DEMs of channels. Our goal is to characterize in-stream and floodplain geomorphology to support aquatic habitat analyses and numerical models of flow and sediment transport. The (RBT) is available for free and is under active development.

River Bathymetry Toolkit (RBT) | Briefing Paper

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 | Class in the Creek | Briefing Paper

featured Science

Water

Disturbance

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 | RMRS Hot Topic

Water Quality

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

Temperature

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  |  Stream Temperature Modeling Website

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Climate Change

Fisheries

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

Climate Change & Wildfires: Effects on Stream Temperatures & Thermal Habitats

Temperature has an important influence on the distribution and abundance of stream organisms. A warming climate is expected to increase stream temperatures, but documentation of such increases is rare and usually limited to trend monitoring at a few sites. Broader understanding of climate effects on thermal characteristics of streams is needed to inform management strategies, but developing this understanding requires modeling techniques that provide valid interpolations between temperature measurement sites. Widespread use of digital temperature loggers provides abundant data in many places that may facilitate development of broad stream temperature models.

Briefing Paper

Air Quality

Air Quality in Mountain Ecosystems - Ozone

Briefing Paper

Watershed Processes

Stream Temperature Modeling

Briefing Paper  |  Stream Temperature Modeling Website

Western Watersheds and Climate Change Workshop

The Western Watersheds and Climate Change: Water and Aquatic System Tools workshop was held from November 17-19, 2009 in the Denver/Boulder area of Colorado. This workshop brought together the management and research community to 1) share knowledge and tools that are currently available to address water and climate change, and 2) identify additional tools that are needed to adequately address water and climate change issues in Forest Plan revisions, project level decisions, and partner activities.

Link to Presentations

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

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

Climate Change & Wildfires: Effects on Stream Temperatures & Thermal Habitats

Temperature has an important influence on the distribution and abundance of stream organisms. A warming climate is expected to increase stream temperatures, but documentation of such increases is rare and usually limited to trend monitoring at a few sites. Broader understanding of climate effects on thermal characteristics of streams is needed to inform management strategies, but developing this understanding requires modeling techniques that provide valid interpolations between temperature measurement sites. Widespread use of digital temperature loggers provides abundant data in many places that may facilitate development of broad stream temperature models.

Briefing Paper

Fire & Fuels

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

Climate Change & Wildfires: Effects on Stream Temperatures & Thermal Habitats

Temperature has an important influence on the distribution and abundance of stream organisms. A warming climate is expected to increase stream temperatures, but documentation of such increases is rare and usually limited to trend monitoring at a few sites. Broader understanding of climate effects on thermal characteristics of streams is needed to inform management strategies, but developing this understanding requires modeling techniques that provide valid interpolations between temperature measurement sites. Widespread use of digital temperature loggers provides abundant data in many places that may facilitate development of broad stream temperature models.

Briefing Paper

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Sediment & Erosion

Roads

Sediment Sources and Yields in the Idaho Batholith

Sediment production to mountain rivers is essential to habitat formation for aquatic organisms, but also decreases reservoir capacity and increases flood risk near dams. Managing these different and sometimes conflicting uses of our rivers is further complicated by a poor understanding of the relative contributions of natural vs. anthropogenic sediment inputs and their likely responses to changing climatic conditions.

Briefing Paper

Waterways

Sediment Impacts From Debris Flows

Headwater basins periodically produce massive pulses of sediment to main stem rivers. Understanding how this sediment affects fluvial processes, aquatic habitats, and infrastructure along river corridors is key to allocating limited management resources.

Briefing Paper

GRAIP- Quantifying and Prioritizing Road Impacts

Briefing Paper   |   GRAIP Website

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Atmospheric Deposition

Air Quality

Air Quality in Mountain Ecosystems - Ozone

Briefing Paper

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Aquatic Ecology

Fisheries

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

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

Other Aquatic Vertebrates & Invertebrates

Boreal Toad populations are declining  and are difficult to observe.  Factors such as understanding their ecology and developing monitoring tools are critical.

Briefing Paper

Invasive Species

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

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.

Temperature

Stream Temperature Modeling

Briefing Paper  |  Stream Temperature Modeling Website

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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Watershed Processes

Roads

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

LiDAR

River Bathymetry Toolkit (RBT)

Traditional techniques for describing and understanding aquatic physical habitat in streams have focused on manual measurements of channel topography. New remote sensing techniques, such as airborne water-penetrating Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and boat-mounted acoustic sensors can produce highly accurate Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) with continuous coverage of long segments of channels and stream networks. The US Forest Service and ESSA Technologies have developed a suite of GIS tools, the River Bathymetry Toolkit (RBT), for processing high resolution DEMs of channels. Our goal is to characterize in-stream and floodplain geomorphology to support aquatic habitat analyses and numerical models of flow and sediment transport. The (RBT) is available for free and is under active development.

River Bathymetry Toolkit (RBT)

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

Climate Change

The Western Watersheds and Climate Change: Water and Aquatic System Tools workshop was held from November 17-19, 2009 in the Denver/Boulder area of Colorado. This workshop brought together the management and research community to 1) share knowledge and tools that are currently available to address water and climate change, and 2) identify additional tools that are needed to adequately address water and climate change issues in Forest Plan revisions, project level decisions, and partner activities.

Link to Presentations

Hydrology

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 | RMRS Hot Topic

Geomorphology

GRAIP- Quantifying and Prioritizing Road Impacts

Briefing Paper   |   GRAIP Website

Erosion

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