Trout unlimited, new England

Climate Change Challenge: bigger floods

Grant Award: $249,943; Year Awarded: 2015

Beginning with its headwaters in Vermont and flowing into western Massachusetts, the North River watershed has experienced severe erosion, bank destabilization, and loss of instream fish habitat because of increasingly frequent and intense storms over the past five years. Projected increases in temperature and precipitation due to climate change further subject the North River stream network and surrounding forest stands to the potential loss of high-quality coldwater fish habitat, increases in invasive flora and fauna, and highly variable precipitation and flow regimes. This project will conduct a series of reinforcing, scalable actions to help riparian and coldwater stream systems transition through climate change, maintaining the productive public fisheries and private timberlands throughout the watershed.