Monitoring | Cold-Water Climate Shield: Delineating Refugia for Preserving Salmonid Fishes Through the 21st Century | Water and Watersheds (W&W) Program - USDA Forest Service Science

Cold-Water Climate Shield

Fish Monitoring

Trout distribution monitoring

The Climate Shield habitat occupancy models provide stream-specific probabilistic predictions about the occurrence of juvenile Bull Trout and Cutthroat Trout throughout the northwestern U.S. Those predictions can be used as prior probabilities to design efficient population monitoring programs and distributional assessments. For example, the electrofishing site detection efficiency estimates derived in Appendix 2 of the Climate Shield manuscript can be used with the spatial information at this website to plan where and how much sampling is necessary to detect either native trout species within a cold-water habitat as described in Peterson and Dunham (2003) and Isaak et al. (2009). The prior probabilities and spatial information can also be used with other sampling techniques like environmental DNA that is being rapidly adopted because of its low cost and high sensitivity for detecting species (Wilcox et al. 2013, 2014; National Genomics Center for Wildlife and Fish Conservation). As more samples are collected in future years, the precision of the Climate Shield models may be increased or new models developed for other aquatic species of concern

trout probability maps for all streams > plan location and number of samples > efficient data collection

Key References

Sampling effort to minimize false absences for juvenile Cutthroat Trout or Bull Trout in cold-water habitats. Appendix 2 from Isaak, D., M. Young, D. Nagel, D. Horan, and M. Groce. 2015. The cold-water climate shield: Delineating refugia for preserving native trout through the 21st Century. Global Change Biology 21 doi:10.1111/gcb.12879.

Carim, K. J., T. Wilcox, M.K. Young, K.S. McKelvey, and M.K. Schwartz. (2014) Protocol for collecting eDNA samples from streams. U.S.D.A. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station V2.1 (April 2015).

Eby, Lisa A.; Helmy, Olga; Holsinger, Lisa M.; Young, Michael K. 2014. Evidence of climate-induced range contractions in bull trout Salvelinus confluentus in a Rocky Mountain watershed, U.S.A. PLoS ONE. 9(6): e98812.

Isaak, Dan; Rieman, Bruce; Horan, Dona 2009. A watershed-scale monitoring protocol for bull trout. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-224. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 25 p.

McKelvey, K. S.; Young, M. K.; Knotek, W. L.; Carim, K. J.; Wilcox, T. M.; Padgett-Stewart, T. M.; Schwartz, M. K. 2016. Sampling large geographic areas for rare species using environmental DNA: A study of bull trout Salvelinus confluentus occupancy in western Montana. Journal of Fish Biology. doi: 10.1111/jfb.12863.

Peterson, James T.; Dunham, Jason 2003. Combining inferences from models of capture efficiency, detectability, and suitable habitat to classify landscapes for conservation of threatened bull trout. Conservation biology. 17(4): 1070-1077.

Wilcox TM, Carim KJ, McKelvey KS, Young MK, Schwartz MK. 2015. The Dual Challenges of Generality and Specificity When Developing Environmental DNA Markers for Species and Subspecies of Oncorhynchus. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0142008. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0142008.

Wilcox, Taylor M., McKelvey, Kevin S., Young, Michael K., Sepulveda, Adam J., Shepard, Bradley B., Jane, Stephen F., Whiteley, Andrew R., Lowe, Winsor H., Schwartz, Michael K. 2016. Understanding environmental DNA detection probabilities: A case study using a stream-dwelling char Salvelinus fontinalis. Biological Conservation. 194. 209–216.

Wilcox, Taylor M.; McKelvey, Kevin S.; Young, Michael K.; Jane, Stephen F.; Lowe, Winsor H.; Whiteley, Andrew R.; Schwartz, Michael K. 2013. Robust detection of rare species using environmental DNA: The importance of primer specificity. PLoS ONE 8(3): e59520. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059520

Wilcox, Taylor M.; Schwartz, Michael K.; McKelvey, Kevin S.; Young, Michael K.; Lowe, Winsor H. 2014. A blocking primer increases specificity in environmental DNA detection of bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus). Conservation Genetics Resources. 6: 283-284.