Integrating thermal infrared stream temperature imagery and spatial stream network models to understand natural spatial thermal variability in streams.

ABSTRACT: Under a warmer future climate, thermal refuges could facilitate the persistence of species relying on cold-water habitat. Often these refuges are small and easily missed or smoothed out by averaging in models. Thermal infrared (TIR) imagery can provide empirical water surface temperatures that capture these features at a high spatial resolution (<1 m) and over tens of kilometers. Our study examined how TIR data could be used along with spatial stream network (SSN) models to characterize thermal regimes spatially in the Middle Fork John Day (MFJD) River mainstem (Oregon, USA). We characterized thermal variation in seven TIR longitudinal temperature profiles along the MFJD mainstem and compared them with SSN model predictions of stream temperature (for the same time periods as the TIR profil

SUBMITTER: Fuller MR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8509081 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature