Climate change could impact water temperatures, Michigan's cold ... - Cadillac News

Climate change could impact water temperatures, Michigan's cold water fisheries | News | cadillacnews.com

Climate change could do more than potentially impact temperatures in Michigan and it might change how certain residents and visitors enjoy the Great Lakes State.

As climate change pushes the Great Lakes region’s cold water lakes and rivers to a breaking point, a recent article in Bridge Magazine explores how Michigan can expect to lose some of its prized cold water habitat. The list of places at risk of warming includes some familiar names like Higgins, Charlevoix, Torch, and Crystal lakes, along with trout streams across the state, according to the article.

Although Michigan officials haven’t started openly acknowledging lost causes like their peers in Minnesota, the Bridge Magazine article reported experts say that as fossil fuel consumption continues to heat the globe, the entire region will be forced to grapple with the question of which habitats on the brink are salvageable, and which aren’t.

Michigan DNR Fisheries Biologist Mark Tonello said, when it comes to climate change’s potential impact on these cold water fisheries, he absolutely thinks the area is in trouble.

While he wouldn’t give a prediction about what he thought would happen or to which inland lakes and rivers/streams, Tonello said climate change won’t affect everywhere the same. He also said every body of water, river or stream is automatically going to warm up by 5 degrees.

“I’m no climate scientist. You can’t make that generalization,” he said.

During his career, which spans more than 20 years, Tonello said he, fellow biologists and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy have been collecting water temperature data from all Michigan streams so in the future they will be able to document if a river or stream gets to the point where it is too warm and trout can’t thrive there. The records they are collecting now will help tell the story, Tonello said.

He said the documenting of existing conditions will allow for the people who follow him in his position in the future will have a “breadcrumb trail” to work with.

He said they are doing the same thing with fish populations.

“As water temperatures change, we will expect fish populations to change. If temperatures warm up, you will expect to see fewer cold water species and a lot of warmer water non-game species,” he said.

While the potential is there, Tonello also said, at least in the Cadillac area, they are nowhere near that point. A lot of the trout streams in the Cadillac area are healthy and maintain really good and cold fish populations. One of the assets the area streams have is the Cadillac area has a lot of groundwater.

In the mountains, Tonello said they have snow melt, but in Michigan, there is a lot of groundwater which keeps the streams and rivers cold and that fact may be what shelters some of the rivers and streams in Michigan from this potential warm up.

“The other thing we have going for our streams is they are in areas that are not heavily developed by people. They have shade, trees and they don’t have concrete, so that when it rains all the warm water doesn’t run into them,” he said. “We have undeveloped land and forest and that will act to protect our rivers as long as we maintain that.

Tonello said in the coming years, the more that land is developed and the more concrete, houses, parking lots and dams are installed, the more it will make climate change worse for those rivers and streams.

Late last year, Consumers Energy said it would unveil its plan regarding 13 dams scattered throughout the Lower Peninsula sometime in 2023. No decision has been made in which direction Consumers Energy was going to take, but earlier this year the utility company said it was seeking bids for some or all of the 13 dam facilities it owns.

In addition to selling the facilities, options include relicensing the dams and using them to continue power generation; removing the dams and returning the river to its natural state; or replacing the dam with an alternative structure that may not generate electricity, but maintains the reservoir and structure in place.

Tonello said no question removing the dams would result in lower stream temperatures on the rivers they are on including the Muskegon and Manistee rivers.

As for rivers in his management unit that he feels are vulnerable to climate change, Tonello said he believes the Middle Branch and Clam Rivers are the two that could be impacted the most.

For the Middle Branch River, Tonello said, in part, it has to do with the Marion Mill Pond dam. He said the water conditions above the dam are fantastic but are warm below the dam. He said below the dam, there are trout in the river but only because the DNR stocks them. If climate change continues, however, Tonello said it will eventually become so warm that even stocking trout won’t be viable, but if the dam at the Marion Mill Pond were to be removed it could change that.

The Clam River, on the other hand, comes out of Lake Cadillac, according to Tonello. He said water starts warm and then flows through the City of Cadillac. There is lots of concrete, roads and all the things that are not good for rivers and streams. As the river progresses, Tonello said it goes through the forest and picks up groundwater further downstream.

Regardless, Tonello said as climate changes the Clam River is warmer than a lot of the trout streams he manages. While it isn’t in the Cadillac area, Tonello said the Little Muskegon River is another river that worries him.

Climate change isn’t just going to be a problem for Michigan’s rivers and streams but also its inland lakes and the Great Lakes, according to Tonello.

One way inland lakes could be impacted is the shift from the smallmouth bass that thrive in colder waters to largemouth bass that do well in warmer waters. He also said it could impact inland lakes with walleye for the same reason.

When it comes to the Great Lakes, Tonello said the glamor species are the cold water species like lake trout, salmon and lake whitefish. He said whitefish are on a decline and while he is not sure if it is directly connected to climate change, it is not helping the situation.

“We are having fewer winters with ice cover or less ice cover. One thing that is linked to whitefish is when there is more ice cover, they produce better year classes,” he said. “In 2014, Lake Michigan was almost completely frozen, like 95% frozen or something like that, and those types of cold winters are becoming fewer and fewer.”

Bridge Magazine reported climate change is disrupting the Great Lakes ecosystem in many ways, from warmer winters and hotter summers that stress plants and animals adapted to the region’s historic climate, to more intense storms and more dramatic water level fluctuations in the Great Lakes.

Cold water fish like trout and salmon, walleye and cisco prefer temperatures well below 70 degrees. Any warmer, and they need more food to survive, they’re more vulnerable to predators and less likely to successfully reproduce, according to Bridge Magazine.

If the water gets too warm, they’ll disappear altogether.

A study last year in the journal Ecosphere concluded that, by mid-century, more than half of Michigan’s 300 high-quality cold water lakes will no longer be categorized as such.

DNR research on rivers is more dated, but a 2016 study estimated that of about 10,000 miles of cold water streams in Michigan, the vast majority will become too warm to qualify by the end of the century, according to the Bridge article.

The places most vulnerable tend to be in the southern part of the state. There, rivers often lack the cold groundwater upwellings that refrigerate Michigan’s northern cold water lakes and streams. They’re also subjected to more development pressure, farm runoff and other human influences that warm water, according to the Bridge Magazine article.