The NorWeST webpage hosts stream temperature data and climate scenarios in a variety of user-friendly digital formats for streams and rivers across the western U.S. The temperature database was compiled from hundreds of biologists and hydrologists working for >100 resource agencies and contains >200,000,000 hourly temperature recordings at >20,000 unique stream sites. Those temperature data were used with spatial statistical network models to develop 36 historical and future climate scenarios at 1-kilometer resolution for >1,000,000 kilometers of stream.
Temperature data and model outputs, registered to NHDPlus stream lines, are posted to the website after QA/QC procedures and development of the final temperature model within a river basin (example interactive temperature map). It is hoped that open access to the data and the availability of accurate stream temperature scenarios will foster new research and collaborative relationships that enhance management and conservation of aquatic resources.
Funding for the project was provided by the GNLCC and NPLCC with additional funds and in-kind support from the USFS, USGS, USFWS, NFWF, California Fish Passage Forum, and NASA. Original grant proposal.
Isaak, D., S. Wenger, E. Peterson, J. Ver Hoef, D. Nagel, C. Luce, S. Hostetler, J. Dunham, B. Roper, S. Wollrab, G. Chandler, D. Horan, S. Parkes-Payne. 2017. The NorWeST summer stream temperature model and scenarios for the western U.S.: A crowd-sourced database and new geospatial tools foster a user community and predict broad climate warming of rivers and streams. Water Resources Research, 53: 9181-9205. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017WR020969.
