Forests in the Pacific Northwest will be less vulnerable to drought and fire over the next three decades than those in the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, computer modeling by researchers in Oregon State University’s College of Forestry shows.

A proposal to store Columbia River water in an off-channel reservoir at the McNary Dam pool is under consideration.

For the second straight week, fish managers want to temporarily change spill operations at a Snake River dam hoping to increase the percentage of listed sockeye salmon that move upstream.

Hot and dry weather has yielded emerging drought conditions across much of Oregon and Washington, but healthy streamflows persist throughout much of the basin mostly due to last winter’s ample snowpack.

As river flows decline and court-ordered spill to gas caps comes to an end at eight Snake and Columbia River dams, fisheries managers at the interagency Technical Management Team this week argued over how “spill to the gas cap” should be defined.

Low spring chinook conversion rates from the Lower Monumental Dam pool up through Little Goose Dam has fisheries managers worried that high flows and involuntary spill are causing the fish to stall in the pool on their migration upstream.

Flooding continues in parts of the Columbia Basin, driven by warm temperatures and a rapid snowpack runoff in British Columbia, western Montana and Idaho.

Maintaining court-ordered spring spill at maximum state-allowed total dissolved gas levels, known as gas caps, at eight federal dams continues to challenge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Spring spill to aid juvenile salmon and steelhead migrating past lower Snake River dams began this week with a twist: instead of a designated target spill at most of the four dams, as was the case last year, the new court-ordered spill target will be to the maximum total dissolved gas levels allowed by state water quality standards, known as gas caps.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will likely begin refill of the reservoir backed up behind Dworshak Dam on the North Fork of the Clearwater River in Idaho by April 15. However, first the Corps says it needs to lower the elevation of the reservoir more to meet its spring flood-risk management requirements, also known as its flood control rule curve.

A new study of long-term snow monitoring sites in the western United States found declines in snowpack at more than 90 percent of those sites – and one-third of the declines were deemed significant.