40 years from now

[salvelinusfontinalis]

40 years from now

Waterways and fish: Diversity of life in streams and wetlands will likely suffer from increased water temperatures and conditions that favor invasive species. One big casualty: wild brook trout, the state fish, which survives only in pristine, cold water.

Pennsylvania is amazingly beautiful and the wild trout that inhabit this state is as beautiful as the trees that make the forest. I remember reading some where that when global warming hits its peak PA will lose something like 70 percent or more of its cold water resource. If you look at the natural reproduction list, thats a lot of streams.

Here is were im goin with this. TU does a lot of good work on a lot of streams. Some streams (like Lititz Run) run borderline in temperature during the summer months. It is likely it wont be able to support trout anymore and will have warm water species. Is TU prepared to stop working on some streams and focus their efforts to save the limestone springs and other likely streams that will survive?
Im sure there are a lot of projects going on right now that will not do anything to help save the cold water fisheries that we will have left.

Feel free to discuss anything in the article. It seems on many fronts we are in for a big change.

I think the change of trees in the woods would be a shame also.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Another thought is:

Of what streams that will be left....how much access do we have to them? It would be scarey to lose all those streams and have half or more of what we have left....posted :-o

 

[LehighRegular]

If this be the case, I see tailwater fisheries being so very important, as well as Limestone spring fisheries.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

I agree LR. I totally agree.

From the article:

The demand for fishing, boating and swimming is likely to increase, and the Fish and Boat Commission may want to increase access to streams and lakes and, perhaps, even consider building more reservoirs.

Just when you build those reservoirs, make the lake deep with a good bottom release damn Not like the one @ blue marsh.

 

[albud1962]

all it will take is one massive volcanic eruption and no more global warming.

 

[FlySwatter]

Here's hoping... :roll:

 

[troutbert]

Speaking of global warming, trout stream water temperatures, etc., does the PFBC still mow the banks right to the water's edge along Big Spring Creek, Cumberland County?

 

[Chaz]

As faras I know there is no plan to not plant buffers along streams because of global warming. In fact the argumenthas been made many times that planting buffers is the only thing that will save many streams. It will also help in sequesturing CO2 the main greenhouse gas.

 

[albud1962]

Troutbert:

The last time I was there it was pretty weedy, I remember getting my fly line stuck in some thickets. Other areas appear to be being mowed. A few tree plantings would do wonders there.

 

[jayL]

albud1962 wrote:
all it will take is one massive volcanic eruption and no more global warming.

Actually, global warming could very easily cause the next ice age.

The addition of melted ice caps to the northern seas can serve to essentially stop the gulf stream, as well as its sister currents across the world. The gulf stream is almost exclusively responsible for keeping us (and especially europe) temperate. Such a scenario would cause another ice age.

Our cold water resources should do just fine. In fact, I can't wait to fish penns at noon in august. :-D

But as usual, we don't know if/what/why. Anyone who claims to know is just posturing.

 

[wgmiller]

Perhaps a bit more evidence of the warming trend: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/07/global.warming/index.html

Better stock up on your saltwater gear now! :-D

 

[pcray1231]

JayL is right about the gulf stream.

1. Global warming means global, not local. There will be areas of the planet which are cooled, not warmed. Hard to tell if we will be one of them.

2. If we do warm, it may or may not bring more rain. Even with warmer temperatures, higher flows may actually cool streams.

Global warming is certainly a long-term threat to our trout. But in the more immediate future (10-20 years), I'm more concerned about the loss of Hemlock's. Losing the Hemlock's may not totally kill many streams, but it'd do some damage to an awful lot of wild trout streams in this state.

 

[JF_]

Of course all of this make never come about, just a mere 40 years ago some headlines mentioned the coming ice age. Hell, 40 years in geological time isn't ever measured. 40 years from now we'll be fine...

 

[Brownout]

I agree with JayLs thoughts about possible cooler temps in our area, and not knowing for sure which way the temps will swing. But, if it gets too warm for the halos, I'll be dumping buckets of smallies...I'm not fishin' for native chub.

 

[pcray1231]

Oh, and Jay, yeah, we know quite a bit about the ocean current system and how/why. Its not just the gulf stream, its the worldwide current system called the "conveyor", for which the gulf stream is part of.

The whole thing is driven by density. Colder and more salt = more dense. Near the poles, the surface water cools, and forms icebergs, raising the salinity of the remaining water. Eventually, it becomes more dense than the deep water and sinks, pulling in surface water to replace it, and pushing away the deep water. Near the equator, the opposite happens, and you get upwelling, deep water comes to the surface, which pulls deep water in and pushes surface water out. So you get a constant, circular flow throughout the entire globe.

In fact, I personally have studied (at a national lab) about how certain events change the system. For instance, if you get a bad monsoon year near the mouth of the red sea, you get a spike of salt injected into the system, and that "bump" proceeds to travel around the globe. At certain bottlenecks, it has an effect. And yes, its possible that a mild winter here could be partially caused by a bad monsoon season in Africa 40 years ago. It's also possible that that bad monsoon season in Africa was caused by a bad monsoon season 200 years ago, these things are circular arguments, but thats the way it is.

As for global warming shutting it down, the zone in the North Atlantic where that water sinks is near Greenland. If its warmer there, you have the combination of warmer water (less icebergs), and a freshwater influx from melting land ice. It can slow, or theoretically even stop, the whole process, plunging us into an ice age. Without the ocean currents, the equator would be much hotter, and the poles much cooler than they are. This is our heat distribution method....

The oceans are actually pretty well understood. What is less understood is the exact effects that this all has on the atmosphere. So we know what may happen to the oceans, but we have trouble predicting where the warmest and coolest spots will be, who will have more rain and who will have drought, etc. The atmosphere is much too complex for the models to handle.

 

[jayL]

Yeah, that's basically what I meant by "sister currents". A while ago, I read a paper that basically highlighted everything you said, but would be curious to see any other resources on the matter. I'll have to do some digging.

My comment on the "if/what/why" mainly served to express my feeling that it's such a chaotic system that any attempt to predict it cannot be taken as gospel... so yeah, we still don't know if/what/why.

 

[Fishidiot]

For what it's worth, it may be of value to look BACK 40 years to see what prognosticators were saying about the future of trout fishing. During the era of "Silent Spring" and the nascent environmental movement fishermen were very pessimistic about the future of the environment and trout fishing in particular. Interestingly enough, I would argue that in many respects trout fishing in PA is actually better today than 40 years ago (with some exceptions). The truth is, trying to predict what trout fishing will be like 40 years from now - while worth speculating upon - must by its very nature be a highly inexact form of speculation. The pessimists of 40 years ago, in my humble opinion, largely got it wrong.

 

[osprey]

Protecting entire watersheds seems to be the ticket , watershed coalitions seem to have the most success.

 

[troutbert]

Fishidiot wrote:
For what it's worth, it may be of value to look BACK 40 years to see what prognosticators were saying about the future of trout fishing. During the era of "Silent Spring" and the nascent environmental movement fishermen were very pessimistic about the future of the environment and trout fishing in particular. Interestingly enough, I would argue that in many respects trout fishing in PA is actually better today than 40 years ago (with some exceptions). The truth is, trying to predict what trout fishing will be like 40 years from now - while worth speculating upon - must by its very nature be a highly inexact form of speculation. The pessimists of 40 years ago, in my humble opinion, largely got it wrong.

Rachel Carson said in Silent Spring that DDT was hammering the bird populations, particularly top level predators like bald eagles and peregrine falcons and ospreys.

And she was right. When I was a kid we never saw bald eagles in PA and ospreys were very rare.

Luckily people paid attention to what she said and DDT has been banned. Since that time these birds have been making a tremendous comeback. Ospreys are common and even bald eagles are becoming widespread.

So, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has been vindicated, not repudiated.

It's similar with a lot of the other environmental activists of 1960s and 1970s. The benefits you have seen are BECAUSE of the courage of those people. They are the reason we had the Clean Water act, efforts to curb acid rain, make improvements in sewage plants, industrial discharges, clean up acid mine drainage, regulate the coal industry to reduce new impacts, etc.

It's pretty ironic. These people fought to get make environmental improvements. After endless struggle, they had some modest successes. So people accuse them of being Chicken Littles.

"No good deed goes unpunished."

 

[RLeep2]

>>all it will take is one massive volcanic eruption and no more global warming.>>

And a couple of significant plagues.

We need to get angling pressure down some..