Climate Change and Crowdsourcing come together at conference
What do climate change, crowdsourcing and natural resource management have in common? A lot if you ask Dan Isaak, a U.S. Forest Service fish biologist who will be the Spokane River Forum Conference lunch keynote Thursday, November 20th.
Like many researchers and policymakers, Dan does not get hung up on whether climate change is caused by human actions or natural cycles. His interest, instead, is focused on how natural resource managers, particularly in the area of fisheries, can address on the ground changes affecting the environment. Said Isaak in a recent publication, “Wise and proactive management decisions in the next decade could substantially affect how many native fish populations there are in Rocky Mountain streams 100 years from now.”
When one thinks about climate change stressors to be concerned with, here are some examples:
- From 1948 to 2006, Pacific Northwest streamflows have decreased by as much as 20—50% in the driest years.
- Rising air temperatures are causing early snowmelt and runoff, thus triggering changes in stream temperature and flow, habitat conditions and fish survival in summer months.
- Beyond the environment, the economics of these changes are significant. According to EPA, “about 33 million anglers spend $41.8 billion annually on trips, equipment, licenses, and other items to support their fishing activities.”
Dan is part of a team of Rocky Mountain Research scientists using crowdsourcing to generate high-resolution stream climate scenario maps that enable collaborative opportunities for natural resource managers to improve decision making and resource allocation. These crowdsourcing efforts aggregate datasets from hundreds of professional biologists and dozens of resource agencies to form a central data repository that can then be used for a variety of purposes.
In one example, Isaak’s team developed the NorWeST Project, which may be the largest regional stream temperature data archive in the world. Currently, the database houses 50,000,000 hourly temperature records from 15,000 unique stream sites across the northwest U.S. Hundreds of biologists and hydrologists working for 70 state, federal, tribal and non-governmental organizations have contributed to it. When complete, the project will include high-resolution stream temperature climate scenarios for 500,000 km of streams across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.
At the conference, Isaak will share examples of how researchers and managers are collecting and making practical use of this data, and how its continued growth is a game changer for using best available science to inform decision making and resource allocation. Said Dan, “It’s always amazing how much data is out there, and people’s willingness to share. When you map combined knowledge over a larger geographic footprint, it provides context for individual projects and concerns you’d never get otherwise. So if I know, for instance, that wildfires have decreased upstream shade and increased stream temperature, what’s the likelihood of a habitat project I’m thinking of working? Or how might I want to change it to improve the chances of success?”
The importance of crowdsourcing and how to do it right is of interest to many attending the conference. Said Andy Dunau, the Forum’s Executive Director, “Whether it’s assessing nonpoint source pollution, PCBs or water resource modeling, we’re seeing a lot more interest in how diverse data and data sets can be brought together to address complex, difficult questions with no obvious answers. Dan’s at the forefront of how to do this. We’re looking forward to learning from his good work.”
Click here for a very well written piece, “Climate Change, Crowd-Sourcing, and Conserving Aquatic Biotas in the Rocky Mountains This Century,” on this work.