Melting Glaciers Likely to Boost Healthy Salmon Spawning Habitat: Study
Dramatic increases in the melting of Alaska’s massive glaciers in the midst of global warming reflect a silver lining for wild salmon, but once the melting has concluded, such benefits will likely not be realized, according to Peter Westley, a fisheries researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Westley highlighted recent work led by colleagues at Simon Fraser University that quantified the rich bounty of salmon habitat currently hidden, but soon to be revealed, by rapidly melting glaciers.
The current rate of melting glaciers in Alaska is much higher than salmon have experienced in a long, long time, said Westley of UAF’s Salmonid Evolutionary Ecology & Conservation (SEEC) Lab.
Currently, glaciers are helping cool the waters and create new habitat for wild salmon, ...