The Interior Department this week released a report that assesses climate change risks and how these risks could impact water operations, hydropower, flood control, and fish and wildlife in the western United States.
Fish and marine species are among the most threatened wildlife on earth, due partly to over exploitation by fishing fleets. Yet there are differences in assessing trends in worldwide fishing stocks which, researchers writing in Conservation Biology argue, stem from inappropriate use of time trends in catches.
The ongoing spread of non-native mussels in the Great Lakes has caused "massive, ecosystem-wide changes" throughout lakes Michigan and Huron, two of the planet's largest freshwater lakes, according to a new University of Michigan-led study.
Monitoring wolf populations has never been easy and it has gotten more difficult in recent years with expanding populations, but now there’s interest in putting a new method to work, possibly as soon as this year.
The concentrations of toxic flame retardants called PBDEs in fish tissues from the Spokane River are higher than any other tested area in Washington state, but recent studies indicate levels of those toxics may actually be dropping.
The 2011 Arctic sea ice extent maximum that marks the beginning of the melt season appears to be tied for the lowest ever measured by satellites, say scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center.
A statistical “chum emergence model” that has proved out in recent years' testing is giving hydro and salmon managers another tool for assessing conditions experienced by the threatened species in the often roiled water below Bonneville Dam.
Wheat farmers in eastern Oregon and Washington who use no-till production systems can substantially stem soil erosion and enhance efforts to protect water quality, according to research by U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists.
Lodgepole pine, a hardy tree species that can thrive in cold temperatures and plays a key role in many western ecosystems, is already shrinking in range as a result of climate change – and may almost disappear from most of the Pacific Northwest by 2080, a new study concludes.
Concerns over the future of water in the American West have prompted scientists from three Oregon universities to join together to study how climate change, human population growth and economic growth will impact water availability and use in the coming decades.
Predatory fish such as cod, tuna, and groupers have declined by two-thirds over the past 100 years, while small forage fish such as sardine, anchovy and capelin have more than doubled over the same period, according to University of British Columbia researchers.
Oregon State University oceanographers deployed their first undersea glider in 2005 and in the past five years, their small fleet of data-gathering autonomous vehicles has logged more than 43,000 kilometers -- a distance that would more than circumnavigate the globe.
Genetic research is showing that healthy steelhead runs in Pacific Northwest streams can depend heavily on the productivity of their stay-at-home counterparts, rainbow trout.
Community watershed councils can establish a social infrastructure that facilitates successful science-based management by participating in data collection and forming neighborhood peer networks, according to a study from the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station.
Not all trout are created equal. Those swimming up the streams of British Columbia might resemble their cousins from Quebec, yet their genetic makeup is regionally affected and has an impact on how they reproduce, grow and react to environmental stressors.
Research conducted at the University of Montana’s Flathead Lake Biological Station has provided important data about how introductions or invasions of nonnative organisms can lead to major changes in the structure of aquatic ecosystems.
Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation have published a report, "Addressing Climate Change in Long-Term Water Resources Planning and Management: User Needs for Improving Tools and Information," that identifies the needs of local, state, and federal water management agencies for climate change information and tools to support long-term planning.
New research indicates the impact of rising CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere will cause unstoppable effects to the climate for at least the next 1,000 years, causing researchers to estimate a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet by the year 3000, and an eventual rise in the global sea level of at least four meters.
Increasing acidity in the sea's waters may fundamentally change how nitrogen is cycled in them, say marine scientists who published their findings in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Little is known about tidal turbines' environmental effects and environmentalists, regulators and turbine manufacturers all need more data to allow the industry to grow.
Bacterial coldwater disease (CWD), caused by the bacterium Flavobacterium psychrophilum, is a lethal infection that causes significant losses of hatchery-reared salmonids worldwide.
In the not-too-distant future, Oregon will face summer water shortages, an increase in wildfire risk and more extreme weather events, according to the first Oregon Climate Assessment Report released this week.
Beginning this month, and lasting for several months, navigation locks at dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers will be closed for maintenance and repairs. While there have been closures of the navigation system in the past, the impact of an extended closure hasn’t been fully realized before.
The stars have been aligned to produce recent years' surge in sockeye returns to the Columbia River basin -- favorable ocean conditions, increased hatcheries releases and improved juvenile rearing habitat and freshwater migration conditions.
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