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American Rivers

Climate Change Challenge: less water, worse drought

Grant Award: $250,000; Year Awarded: 2016

In the headwaters of the Yakima River Basin, the Teanaway River, with its tributaries and meadows, supports hydrologic and ecological functions that maintain the region’s ecology. Impacts from historic logging, grazing, and agriculture have left Teanaway subbasin streams channelized, incised, and without functional riparian corridors. These conditions have decreased stream base flows for more than 60 years, disconnected streams from side-channels and floodplain habitat, and generally impaired ecosystem functions in the Teanaway. American Rivers will repair these conditions and enhance resilience of stream ecosystem functions to climate change, raising stream base flows, moderate water temperature fluctuations, decrease water maximum temperature increases, and reestablish robust riparian corridors.