January
22, 2019 by Steve Lundeberg, Oregon State University
Populations
of coastal cutthroat trout and coastal giant salamanders in the Pacific
Northwest show the ability to rebound quickly from drought conditions, new
research by Oregon State University suggests.
The
findings, published in the journal Hydrobiologia,
indicate that the fish and salamander populations can get back to predrought
form within just a few years.
That's
important because climate change is anticipated to make drought years such
as the one in this study—2015—occur more frequently, and the resilience of
these dominant stream predators suggests they will be able to persist as long
as the droughts do not occur many years in a row.
"What
we found buys us time to try to fix climate change as
best we can or at least keep it where it is right now," said study
co-author Dana Warren, an OSU faculty member in the College of Agricultural
Sciences and the College of Forestry. "If we can do that, the populations
in these headwater streams will be fairly resilient, but if not, they'll
clearly be more threatened."
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