Populations of coastal cutthroat trout and coastal giant salamanders in the Pacific Northwest show the ability to rebound quickly from drought conditions, new research by Oregon State University suggests.
The findings, published in the journal Hydrobiologia, indicate that the fish and salamander populations can get back to predrought form within just a few years.
That’s important because climate change is anticipated to make drought years such as the one in this study – 2015 – occur more frequently, and the resilience of these dominant stream predators suggests they will be able to persist as long as the droughts do not occur many years in a row.
“What we found buys us time to try to fix climate change as best we can or at least keep it where it is right now,” said study co-author Dana Warren, an OSU faculty member in the College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Forestry. “If we can do that, the populations in these headwater streams will be fairly resilient, but if not, they’ll clearly be more threatened.”