Seminar 8. May 22. Generating Scenarios of Salmon Recovery.
The session goals are to 1) review the concept of "scenarios", discuss analytical and decision approaches to scenarios analysis for identifying actions and predicting their effects on the status of salmon populations, and 2) focus specifically on how habitat is analyzed in scenarios.
Lead Speakers:
Michelle McClure, Northwest Fisheries Science Center
Michelle McClure (Michelle.Mcclure@noaa.gov) grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and attended The Evergreen State College, receiving an undergraduate degree in interdisciplinary studies. She spent several years working as a research assistant on a variety of biological and archeological projects before returning to school at Cornell University. After completing her dissertation research on the development and evolution of pigment patterns in the zebrafish and several congeners, she received her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell in 1998. She spent several months as a science journalism fellow at an NPR-affiliate radio station in Ohio before obtaining a position with the National Marine Fisheries Service as Salmon Science Coordinator for the Columbia Basin. She currently is a co-chair of the Interior Columbia Technical Recovery Team, an interdisciplinary, multi-agency effort to determine population structure, define recovery goals and assist policy-makers in determining appropriate suites of actions for achieving recovery.
Nate Mantua, University of Washington
Nathan Mantua, (mantua@atmos.washington.edu) is an affiliate Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Marine Affairs at the University of Washington, and a full time research scientist with the UW's Climate Impacts Group. Most of his current research is focused on regional impacts of climate on the water cycle and marine ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest, and how climate information is or isn't being used in resource management decisions.
He received a B S from the University of California at Davis in 1988, and a Ph D from the UW's Department of Atmospheric Science in 1994 for numerical modeling studies of El Nino/Southern Oscillation. In April 2000 he received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for his climate impacts research and public outreach activities.
Student Questions
Michelle McClure
No questions posed
Nate Mantua
1. How can climate information be used to determine the appropriate temporal scales for modeling?
2. To what extent can we impact the climate? What would be the effect on the climate due to large-scale conversion from hydroelectric to other energy sources?
3. How do scenarios and current models consider larger-scale drivers, such as ocean conditions? We need to ensure that freshwater and estuarine conditions are good enough to give salmon the resilience to persist even under poor ocean survival conditions. When larger scale-effects appear to be driving a population, as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation may be doing at the moment, can we isolate these impacts so as to determine the effect of other, more local changes?