Melting Glaciers

Read more about the article Coastal Tribes Convene to Tackle Climate Change
This series of pictures from the University of Washington and Larry Workman shows the disappearance of Anderson Glacier which feeds the Quinault River.

Coastal Tribes Convene to Tackle Climate Change

This series of pictures from the University of Washington and Larry Workman shows the disappearance of Anderson Glacier which feeds the Quinault River.

On Washington’s rugged Pacific coast, the Quinault Indian Nation has depended on salmon for thousands of years. But the glaciers that feed the Quinault and Queets Rivers and sustain these salmon populations are in retreat because of climate change, threatening the very survival of the salmon.

In Alaska, native villages are pulling up stakes and moving to new ground as the permafrost beneath them melts and erodes due to warming global temperatures.

In the U.S. Pacific Islands rainfall and stream levels are decreasing while storm intensity, sea level, and atmospheric and oceanic temperatures are on the rise. Communities are threatened by the resulting decline in underwater aquifers and increases in land-based pollution, coral bleaching, fire risk, hillside and shoreline erosion, and altered fish abundance and distribution. (more…)

Continue ReadingCoastal Tribes Convene to Tackle Climate Change

Scientists receive $900,000 federal grant

Greg Hood of SRSC is among a group of scientists receiving a grant to devise a computer model of the Skagit River Delta and Skagit and Padilla bays if the oceans rise.

The Skagit Valley Herald:

Rising ocean levels could change change approaches to restoration of salt marshes and the Skagit River estuary that the threatened Chinook and other salmon species need to thrive.

Three Western Washington scientists — Greg Hood, John Rybczyk and Tarang Khangaonkar — will build a computer model to predict what could happen to the Skagit River Delta and Skagit and Padilla bays if the oceans rise. Scientists say the model will help them make decisions about where to best to restore salmon habitat restoration and what might happen if dikes are removed.

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Continue ReadingScientists receive $900,000 federal grant