Eastern Montana Fisheries
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Eastern Montana Fisheries Community is using ScienceBase to document and study future streamflow and fisheries data in eastern Montana. Streams in the Northern Great Plains provide critical “green lines” of habitat for aquatic and terrestrial wildlife. The fish in these streams have evolved to survive heat, cold, floods, and drought. However, changes in water quantity associated with global climate change may transform some prairie streams from essential refuges to habitats no longer capable of supporting fishes. U.S. Geological Survey researchers and their partners are studying these potential changes in stream ecosystems in the Montana portion of the northern Great Plains. The Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) loosely coupled with the RegCM3 regional climate model is being used to estimate possible changes in streamflow under future climate scenarios in eastern Montana. PRMS is a deterministic, distributed-parameter, process-based model that simulates the effects of precipitation, temperature, and land use on streamflow. RegCM3 is used to dynamically downscale global climate simulations. Local PRMS models will be constructed for the Redwater River and O’Fallon Creek watersheds in eastern Montana. Parameters for these local models will be extracted from a regional PRMS model for the entire Missouri River watershed. The local models will then be calibrated to historical streamflow data. Both the local and regional PRMS watershed models will be used to simulate streamflows for more than 1,000 sites in eastern Montana where fisheries data have been collected. General circulation models (GCMs) simulate a wide range of possible future climate scenarios on a global scale. RegCM3 uses lateral boundary conditions from selected GCMs, and then simulates atmospheric circulation and surface interactions internally at a 15-kilometer resolution. Precipitation and temperature time series simulated by RegCM3 will be used to force the PRMS models to generate streamflows under possible future climate scenarios. Fisheries managers will be able to combine possible future streamflows with fisheries data to help focus conservation and restoration efforts in the northern Great Plains. Information related to changes in timing and quantities of streamflow also will be useful to watershed conservation groups, ranchers, and others that rely on northern Great Plains streams.