Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Colorado
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

In the face of climate change, water demand, and extensive urbanization, water temperature is becoming an increasingly challenging pollutant in Colorado. Current temperature standards governing thermally-altering effluent are based on laboratory studies from a few select species that have adequate laboratory-based thermal data and most of laboratory data is focused on maximum thermal tolerances. More field data are needed to adequately address regulatory standards. Many agencies are collecting temperature data, but none specifically place their monitoring loggers where fisheries data are present. Thus, many sites have temperature data or fisheries data, but it is rare to have both at the same location. This project will fill that data-gap by placing temperature loggers at sites with good fisheries data, but inadequate temperature data. In addition, data will be collected on temperature tolerances of fish species of concern in Colorado.