Measuring stream temperature with digital data loggers: a user's guide

Dunham, Jason B.; Chandler, Gwynne L.; Rieman, Bruce E.; Martin, Don S.

doi:10.2737/rmrs-gtr-150

Cited by 86 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Implementation of an extensive monitoring network that generated full-year data would be invaluable and could be accomplished at a fraction of current costs if properly coordinated. Spatial databases, reliable and inexpensive sensor technology, and improved methods for establishing permanent sites in streams should make this easier in the future (Dunham et al 2005;Isaak et al 2010b;Isaak and Horan 2011).…”

Section: Temperature Monitoring Needsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change effects on stream and river temperatures across the northwest U.S. from 1980–2009 and implications for salmonid fishes

et al. 2011

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Thermal regimes in rivers and streams are fundamentally important to aquatic ecosystems and are expected to change in response to climate forcing as the Earth's temperature warms. Description and attribution of stream temperature changes are key to understanding how these ecosystems may be affected by climate change, but difficult given the rarity of long-term monitoring data. We assembled 18 temperature time-series from sites on regulated and unregulated streams in the northwest U.S. to describe historical trends from 1980-2009 and assess thermal consistency between these stream categories. Statistically significant temperature trends were detected across seven sites on unregulated streams during all seasons of the year, with a cooling trend apparent during the spring and warming trends during the summer, fall, and winter. The amount of warming more than compensated for spring cooling to cause a net temperature increase, and rates of warming were highest during the summer (raw trend = 0.17°C/decade; reconstructed trend = 0.22°C/decade). Air temperature was the dominant factor explaining long-term stream temperature trends (82-94% of trends) and inter-annual variability (48-86% of variability), except during the summer when discharge accounted for approximately half (52%) of the inter-annual variation in stream temperatures. Seasonal temperature trends at eleven sites on regulated streams were qualitatively similar to those at unregulated sites if two sites managed to reduce summer and fall temperatures were excluded from the analysis. However, these trends were never statistically significant due to greater variation among sites that resulted from local water management policies and effects of upstream reservoirs. Despite serious deficiencies in the stream temperature monitoring record, our results suggest many streams in the northwest U.S. are exhibiting a regionally coherent response to climate forcing. More extensive monitoring efforts are needed as are techniques for short-term sensitivity analysis and reconstructing historical temperature trends so that spatial and temporal patterns of warming can be better understood. Continuation of warming trends this century will increasingly stress important regional salmon and trout resources and hamper efforts to recover these species, so comprehensive vulnerability assessments are needed to provide strategic frameworks for prioritizing conservation efforts.

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Section: Temperature Monitoring Needsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change effects on stream and river temperatures across the northwest U.S. from 1980–2009 and implications for salmonid fishes

et al. 2011

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“…Because the specific heat of water is over four times that of air, data loggers in dry stream channels typically display highly variable daily temperature records [10,11]. Secondly, Sowder and Steel [9] recommend examining paired water and air temperature records for a given site, if available.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Statistical Method to Predict Flow Permanence in Dryland Streams from Time Series of Stream Temperature

Arisméndi

Dunham

Heck

et al. 2017

Water

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Intermittent and ephemeral streams represent more than half of the length of the global river network. Dryland freshwater ecosystems are especially vulnerable to changes in human-related water uses as well as shifts in terrestrial climates. Yet, the description and quantification of patterns of flow permanence in these systems is challenging mostly due to difficulties in instrumentation. Here, we took advantage of existing stream temperature datasets in dryland streams in the northwest Great Basin desert, USA, to extract critical information on climate-sensitive patterns of flow permanence. We used a signal detection technique, Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), to extract information from daily time series of stream temperature to diagnose patterns of stream drying. Specifically, we applied HMMs to time series of daily standard deviation (SD) of stream temperature (i.e., dry stream channels typically display highly variable daily temperature records compared to wet stream channels) between April and August (2015-2016). We used information from paired stream and air temperature data loggers as well as co-located stream temperature data loggers with electrical resistors as confirmatory sources of the timing of stream drying. We expanded our approach to an entire stream network to illustrate the utility of the method to detect patterns of flow permanence over a broader spatial extent. We successfully identified and separated signals characteristic of wet and dry stream conditions and their shifts over time. Most of our study sites within the entire stream network exhibited a single state over the entire season (80%), but a portion of them showed one or more shifts among states (17%). We provide recommendations to use this approach based on a series of simple steps. Our findings illustrate a successful method that can be used to rigorously quantify flow permanence regimes in streams using existing records of stream temperature.

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“…Hobo Temp Pro (Onset Computer Corp.) digital temperature dataloggers, accurate to (±0.2 °C) were deployed and quality controlled following procedures outlined by Dunham et al (2005). A fifteen-minute sampling interval was used for all data loggers.…”

Section: Temperature Monitoringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coeur d'Alene Tribe Fisheries Program : Implementation of Fisheries Enhancement Opportunities on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation : 2006 Annual Report.

Vitale¹,

Hallock²,

Firehammer³

2008

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Measuring stream temperature with digital data loggers: a user's guide

Cited by 86 publications

References 6 publications

Climate change effects on stream and river temperatures across the northwest U.S. from 1980–2009 and implications for salmonid fishes

Climate change effects on stream and river temperatures across the northwest U.S. from 1980–2009 and implications for salmonid fishes

A Statistical Method to Predict Flow Permanence in Dryland Streams from Time Series of Stream Temperature

Coeur d'Alene Tribe Fisheries Program : Implementation of Fisheries Enhancement Opportunities on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation : 2006 Annual Report.

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