Assessing the Regional Biological and Chemical Exposure Risk of Pacific Salmonids to Agricultural Cropland Practices

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: A vulnerability assessment is a science-driven policy tool that enables practitioners in salmonid conservation to identify the relative threat level of individual salmonid DPSs. Existing vulnerability assessments focus on the threats posed to Pacific salmonids by urban land use and climate change, but there is a need to assess present and future threats from agricultural land use practices. Here I identify both an index that quantifies exposure risk to agricultural lands which may pose threats for juvenile Pacific salmonids and a methodology to analyze threats to freshwater habitat by fertilizer and pesticide (herbicide, insecticide, fungicide) pollution. This project characterized the exposure risk, a component of vulnerability, of all 30 ESA-listed DPSs of anadromous Pacific salmon and steelhead to agricultural cropland use, with particular consideration of biological and chemical threats from pesticide and fertilizer use. Novel geospatial analysis approaches reveal a range of exposure risks of Pacific salmonid DPS freshwater stream habitat to pesticide and fertilizer pollution from agricultural croplands, with concentrations of high-exposure risk DPSs in the Central Valley of California and the Interior Columbia River recovery domain. These findings support efforts to characterize Pacific salmonid exposure to agricultural land use externalities as part of a larger vulnerability assessment.

Type of resource	text
Publication date	June 9, 2023

Subject	Vulnerability Assessment
Subject	Pacific Salmonid
Subject	Salmonid
Subject	Salmon
Subject	Agriculture
Subject	Cropland Agriculture
Subject	Pesticide
Subject	Fertilizer
Subject	Biological and Chemical Exposure
Subject	Impact of Pesticide and Fertilizer on Salmonid
Subject	Pacific Salmonid Vulnerability Assessment
Genre	Text
Genre	Thesis

DOI	https://doi.org/10.25740/xs970wf4360
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/xs970wf4360

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred citation: Schmitter, S. (2023). Assessing the Regional Biological and Chemical Exposure Risk of Pacific Salmonids to Agricultural Cropland Practices. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/xs970wf4360. https://doi.org/10.25740/xs970wf4360.

Undergraduate Honors Theses, Doerr School of Sustainability

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