The NorWeST Summer Stream Temperature Model and Scenarios for the Western U.S.: A Crowd-Sourced Database and New Geospatial Tools Foster a User Community and Predict Broad Climate Warming of Rivers and Streams

摘要: Thermal regimes are fundamental determinants of aquatic ecosystems, which makes description and prediction temperatures critical during a period rapid global change. The advent inexpensive temperature sensors dramatically increased monitoring in recent decades, although most is done by individuals for agency-specific purposes, collectively these efforts constitute massive distributed sensing array that generates an untapped wealth data. Using the framework provided National Hydrography Dataset, we organized records from dozens agencies western U.S. to create NorWeST database hosts >220,000,000 recordings >22,700 stream river sites. Spatial-stream-network models were fit subset those data described mean August water (AugTw) 63,641 site-years develop accurate (r2 = 0.91; RMSPE = 1.10°C; MAPE = 0.72°C), assess covariate effects, make predictions at 1 km intervals summer climate scenarios. AugTw averaged 14.2°C (SD = 4.0°C) baseline 1993–2011 343,000 perennial streams but trend reconstructions also indicated warming had occurred rate 0.17°C/decade (SD = 0.067°C/decade) 40 year 1976–2015. Future scenarios suggest continued warming, variation will occur within among networks due differences local forcing responsiveness. available online user-friendly digital formats widely used coordinate agencies, new research, conservation planning.