I am pleased to announce the publication of my article, “Nutrients across time: relationships with climate, hydrology, and land use in four rivers of the Pacific Northwest.” My findings have important implications for spatio-temporal water resource management issues such as water quantity and quality, agriculture and land use development, climate change, harmful algal blooms, drinking water, fish populations, timber harvests, and public health.

The Columbia River Basin and the study watersheds of the Willamette, Yakima, Spokane, and Salmon (in red) with locator map (inset). Climate (green-black triangles) and hydrology (blue-black circles) sampling stations are shown at the mouths of each watershed.

I found that nutrient dynamics have distinctly seasonal signals related to stream and air temperature, discharge, and precipitation. Encouragingly, I also found that nutrient concentrations across the Pacific Northwest decreased over the past few decades. However, they do remain problematically above threshold levels for eutrophication. I provide reasons in an attempt to explain these dynamics in the paper. For water resource management decisions, I encourage careful consideration of multiple objectives. Please get in touch if you’d like to dive into particular aspects of it!