Climate Change Across the Salmon Life-Cycle
Date:
Climate change is affecting salmon throughout their life cycle in different and sometimes unexpected ways. Individual life stages are impacted—from ocean climate variability driving large shifts in survival and growth to warming streams causing mortality in adult migrants. Yet, the population-level impacts of climate change will be a function of cumulative impacts of climate change across life stages. Importantly, climate impacts in one life-stage may carryover to the next. Experiences/conditions from the freshwater environment can be carried over to the early ocean environment and this may affect early ocean survival, and population growth. Likewise, changes in ocean conditions could change en-route mortality, pre-spawn mortality and influence the next generation through intergenerational effects. This symposium will bring together researchers studying salmonids across life-stages including carryover and intergenerational effects. We will begin with the juvenile life-history stage and work through the life stages of salmon ending where we began, at the juvenile life-history stage. The end of the symposium will include a panel discussion on next steps for research. For this symposium we welcome studies that examine climate change in the context of individual, population and species-level effects on salmonids that cut across one or more life stages.