Alaska Sustainable Salmon Fund Project #52002: Climate warming effects on Chinook Salmon foraging conditions and growth

The Chena River hosts one of the largest populations of Chinook Salmon in the Alaska portion of the Yukon River drainage, which has recently experienced poor Chinook returns throughout. Past work suggests that these fish do poorly when they grow slowly due to cold, high-flow conditions during their first summer in the river as juveniles, and the population does well when juveniles experience warm, low-flow years and grow larger. Because high flow drives low water temperatures and vice versa, it was previously unclear to what extent each factor—flow and temperature—affects the fish population.

We collected data to run foraging and bioenergetics models that simulate how flow and temperature affect growth. We invented two sampling devices, a suction pump to sample drifting prey and a computer vision system to measure the inedible debris that occupy most of a fish's feeding effort. We combined our data with USGS and NOAA records to predict temperature, turbidity, prey, and debris on a daily basis throughout our study years (2019-2020) and others.

This dataset contains the data we collected and compiled from other sources on fish growth, temperature, invertebrate drift, and drifting debris.