University of Idaho
$100,000  Blue Mountains 

Climate change is driving drier conditions and drought throughout Oregon and the Western U.S., resulting in higher stream water temperatures and increasing thermal stress on native aquatic species. The Middle Fork John Day River (MFJDR) Conservation Opportunity Area is a high priority monitoring watershed and is representative of many climates and meadow environments that are critical habitats for native salmonids (e.g., Chinook and steelhead). High summer water temperatures are one of the primary factors limiting native salmonid habitat availability in the basin. To alleviate instream thermal stress, successful meadow restoration must ensure late-season streamflow and thermal buffering capacity to support long-term salmonid survival. Recent stream restoration activities have focused on increasing physical channel heterogeneity and hydrologic connectivity with the floodplain to generate thermal buffering and aquatic habitat resilience. However, it is difficult to evaluate the efficacy of different restoration strategies in addressing high water temperatures owing to the complex hydrologic processes that spatially change over the season. To address these challenges, we have partnered with multiple agencies in Oregon to develop a four-year comprehensive monitoring strategy to link restoration actions, hydrologic processes and thermal responses at the local, reach, and watershed scale.

We are requesting funds from OCRF to support the first two years of post-river restoration monitoring. During this initial phase, we will deploy a spatially dense network of monitoring sensors within the river corridor to evaluate hyporheic fluxes, groundwater levels, and surface-subsurface water temperatures. We will further leverage the OCRF funding to connect rural community members with the concepts of hydrologic connectivity and thermal resilience in streams as a potential solution for native aquatic species to survive drought and acute climatic forcing in wet meadow environments.