Project Background and Goals
Project Background and Goals
Embedded Files
Project History
Project History
Starting in 2020, Eagle Creek resident David Bugni began to assemble a network of agencies, non-profits, industry and private landowners interested in participating in an unprecedented multi-year, Clackamas watershed-wide stream temperature monitoring effort. This resulted in a 2021 field deployment of 80 temperature sensors at sites distributed across the basin, each recording data continuously for the summer months. Notably, this first year of data collection occurred following the historic 2020 Labor Day fires (during which the Riverside and Lionshead Fires burned across approximately 25% of the watershed) and during Oregon's record-breaking June 2021 heat dome event.
In 2022, Portland State University's Geography Department became involved with the project and began to analyze the 2021 data. Additional sites were added to the 2022 and 2023 summer field deployments, for an astounding total of over 100 sites for the project's subsequent seasons of data collection. Also in 2023, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's Corvallis Research lab joined the project with aim of using analysis of present and historic stream temperatures to project future thermal habitat for salmon.
Project Objectives
Project Objectives
The principal goal of this study is to depict in the present day, and to project in the future, how stream temperatures within the Clackamas River Basin vary across time and space. Thermal maps will depict such changes that are easily understandable to all: from the general public to researchers.
In 2021, David Bugni displays the sensors, their protective housings and the various anchorage devices employed to attach the sensor assemblies to the stream bed at monitoring locations (above); Fall 2021 retrieval of deployed sensor in Wash Creek by USFS staff (below).
Management Implications
Stream temperature specifically relates to the abundance and composition of the native fish community. Knowing sources of cold water in the basin will aid in determining the likely or preferred distribution of fish during their spawning and rearing life stages. In a general sense, this information can be used to identify strategic actions to protect, enhance and restore, where possible, thermal habitat and cold-water refuges. Actions identified and implemented are important for optimal climate resiliency and stewardship for this basin, which provides drinking water for 10% of Oregon’s population and is important for salmon recovery within the Willamette River and Lower Columbia River basins. On average, rearing salmonids and other cold-water species will tend to seek out the coldest and otherwise most conducive habitat; therefore, this study will also aid in fish habitat restoration measures to allow planners to place such efforts where the fish are most likely to be, both now and in the future, thus maximizing benefit-to-costs ratios. As climate change continues, locating reliable sources of cold water (on a larger scale) will aid in developing public policy to implement protection measures to ensure, in a relative sense, that such sources will remain.
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