Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Identifying, Assessing and Adapting to Climate Change Impacts to Yurok Water and Aquatic Resources, Food Security and Tribal Health
EPA Grant Number: R835604Title: Identifying, Assessing and Adapting to Climate Change Impacts to Yurok Water and Aquatic Resources, Food Security and Tribal Health
Investigators: Fluharty, Suzanne , Cozzetto, Karen
Institution: Yurok Tribe Environmental Program , Northern Arizona University , Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium , Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2017 (Extended to June 30, 2018)
Project Amount: $908,965
RFA: Science for Sustainable and Healthy Tribes (2013) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Tribal Environmental Health Research , Human Health
Objective:
The Yurok Tribe is extremely vulnerable to hydrologic changes resulting from climate change, due to their geographic location and reliance on surface waters and aquatic resources by tribal members. This study identifies areas of water resource vulnerability and resiliency, discusses impacts on Yurok food security and tribal health, and provides possible strategies to improve the Tribe's adaptive capacity to prepare and respond to climate-induced impacts. It is hoped that by offering improved methods and resources and the most current, comprehensive data sets, water and aquatic resources managers will have the support of decision-making tools to allow accurate estimates of future variations in water availability and quality that are critical to the health of people, the environment, and their supporting culture and economy.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
Primary Accomplishments
- The aims of the project did not change from the original application and accomplishments have met the goals and objectives (outputs/outcomes) for the project.
- Primary data generation includes continuous temperature records from over 100 remote Hobo probes, data compilation, QA/QC and formatting of Yurok-specific local data. This was delivered to the GIS temperature modeling contractor (Riverbend Sciences) and was successfully interfaced and incorporated with the U.S. Forest Service's NorWeST Stream regional model of climate change. In addition, local Yurok staff training was held to allow them familiarity with the model and increase the utility of the model for other local scientific studies. The key points from this work are listed below and further described in detail in the project report GIS Stream Temperature Modeling of Yurok Ancestral Territory by J. Eli Asarian of Riverbend Sciences.
- This study compiled nearly all available water temperature data collected in rivers and streams within Yurok Ancestral Territory since 1992.
- Data were input into spatial stream-network models to estimate August stream temperatures for each 1-km stream reach, adapting methods from the NorWeST model.
- The original 2015 NorWeST version predicted warmer temperatures along the coast and cooler temperatures inland than field measurements supported. The new model corrects that issue.
- The NorWeST model indicates that, compared to other areas in the Western United States, stream temperatures in Yurok Ancestral Territory should be relatively resilient to climate change.
- The resulting stream temperature maps can be used for many purposes, including prioritizing areas for stream restoration/protection and climate change adaptation planning.
- The Climate Change Impacts to Yurok Tribal Health report documents local Tribal members' concerns, priorities and health-related vulnerabilities gathered through local community participatory research and was incorporated into the larger Adaptation Plan as Chapter 7. Of the many climate changes expected to occur across the region, increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns and ocean changes are all particularly important in determining the overall health risk for Tribal members.
Three priority health areas of concern were identified by Yurok Tribal Members and staff: impacts to water resources, subsistence diets and community mental health. Both primary and secondary impacts from climate changes in these priority areas may increase the risk and prevalence of diseases, although in most cases not all Tribal members will be affected equally. Within these three areas, eight diseases as shown in the chart below were selected for more in-depth research for this assessment, as we found in every scenario an increased risk of negative health impacts due to localized climate changes. Finally, to help lessen the impacts of these climate-related diseases, a compendium of institutional and individual adaptation strategies were developed in the hope that by identifying a range of possible intervention points, both individual Tribal members and larger the tribal community can develop intervention actions, policies and programs to reduce these community health risks.
Priority Environmental Health Areas | Climate-Relevant Diseases | Climate Health Impacts | |
Water Resources | | Rashes | Warmer water temperatures increase the likelihood for freshwater harmful algal blooms, increasing toxin levels and exposures. |
| Shellfish Poisoning | Warming stream, river and ocean temperatures will increase the likelihood of harmful algal blooms that make it unsafe to consume shellfish and increase the risk of Tribal member poisonings. | |
| Waterborne Pathogens | Heavier downpours will increase runoff from the land into creeks and rivers, moving nutrients and such bacteria as Escherichia coli into domestic water sources and human contact. | |
Subsistence Diet | | Diabetes | Ocean acidification may undermine the marine food web and further decrease the abundance of salmon and other subsistence species, thereby limiting health-supporting minerals and omega-3 fatty acids. |
| Cancer | Warming stream, river and ocean temperatures degrade water quality and may limit important habitats for subsistence species, making them less available for consumption. | |
| Heart Disease | Lower all-round water availability and moisture may increase wildfires, increasing air pollution and exacerbating heart disease. | |
Community Mental Health | | Mental Health and Extreme Weather | Heavier precipitation events can increase flooding, destroy property, and limit access to important natural and cultural resources. |
| Multigenerational Trauma | All changing climate conditions disrupt the Yurok way of life, continuing and worsening depression and alcoholism. |
- The Yurok Climate Change Adaptation Plan was completed in June 2018 during the project's final year. It integrates national and regional forecasts with local climate impacts, vulnerabilities, priorities and adaptive capacity. In addition, it documents Tribal community observations and concerns regarding climate change and records over 400 strategies for possible adaption actions for Yurok-specific lifeways and territory.
- In addition to the reports and water temperature data within the Yurok Ancestral Territory discussed above, this project has generated important baseline data, including the following:
- Delineation of 57 creek watershed boundaries and water quality data on 19 springs and 27 tributaries, including temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen in mg/mL, percent dissolved oxygen and pH - These have revealed high levels of conductivity in many of the streams and springs on the Reservation that may indicate excessive minerals and salts that could possibly generate a public health risk via the many small, unregulated domestic drinking water systems utilized by Tribal and community members. Both the underlying bedrock of the Reservation that is predominantly the highly mineralized Klamath Mountains and the results of previous research and sampling of the Klamath River's mainstem water that document concentrations of arsenic, cadmium, aluminum, lead and manganese support the need for additional water sampling and analysis of those springs and tributaries with higher-than-expected conductivity levels to determine what minerals are responsible and if the levels pose an unacceptable public health risk. Additional testing is required to help in the determination as to whether the minerals in the water are representative of ambient geologic conditions or an artifact of concentrated mineral levels resulting from drought conditions or anthropogenic activities.
- Pathogen analysis - Tribal member and community outreach alongside initial screening of the domestic water sources on the Yurok Reservation during the first year revealed concerns with two standard water-borne pathogens: (1) a reportedly periodic widespread level of high total coliforms and Escherichia coli (E.coli) detections in private systems and (2) low-level detection of Giardia species in one public water system.
- Cyanotoxins analysis - 30 cost-effective passive samplers were utilized, and we leveraged our association and partnership with University of California, Davis on a concurrent NOAH grant to provide the laboratory analysis for four different microcystin congeners (MCY-LR, RR, YR, LA) and anatoxin-a sampling.
- Sampling and testing for verification of levels of shellfish amnesic poison (domoic acid) in subsistence eels and paralytic shellfish poison in marine mussels, indicating presence of algal toxins.
This water quality information from the STAR project provides valuable baseline data that not only inform the Tribe's Administration of the potential public health risk, but also helps in the understanding of increasing future impacts to water quantity and quality from both the current drought conditions in California and increasing climate changes. Now, through new and ground-truthed information on domestic source water intakes, the Tribe is forewarned, and both policy and planning for future Tribal members' housing may include water testing for any minerals with potential to impact public health prior to approval of permitting. This offers a proactive, protective stance for the Tribe in carrying out its values, goals and constitutional mandate to steward the environment and natural resources of their Ancestral Territory for current and future members' use.
Project Evaluation—Four Major Difficulties
Difficulty 1. Interfacing locally derived field data with national hydrologic datasets initially was problematic. National locational data for stream location, order and attributes often were found to be erroneous for the project's remote area. These difficulties were met by merging the National Hydrography Dataset and Yurok GIS data layers and using the newly grant-generated and field-truthed Yurok Tribe Environmental Program (YTEP) data for sites that were not initially included in the NorWeST stream network.
Then, the map of the national stream courses was adjusted to converge with the local GPS points. The outcome includes updated GIS shapefiles and data transfer to the NorWeST Stream model. One-and-a-half to 2 years of temperature data from the corrected stream reaches offered more accurate local and current (2015 - 2017) continuous stream temperatures of the Lower Klamath River's tributaries and allows for an improved regional climate change model and forecasts of climate change impacts. The outcome includes updated maps and GIS shapefiles necessary to the goals of the project and provides Yurok natural resource departments with the most accurate local modeling of potential climate change impacts. This, in turn, provides realistic data to facilitate viable planning for restoration, management and climate change adaptations for both natural resources and public health.
Difficulty 2. Older, often obsolete, maps and access problems plagued research efforts to locate the project's targeted water resources, such as local springs, headwaters or upper reaches of the Reservation's tributaries. These sites were often plotted with misleading and erroneous information from their actual location and required staff to take the time for outreach to gather local residents' knowledge. The same has held true regarding which roads are passable. In particular, logging company maps are several decades old, and many roads that look promising have been washed away or have had landslides that block access.
It also was frequently encountered that locked gates had been erected, either by community members to stop trespass and incursion into the local landscape by marijuana growers or by the marijuana growers to protect their harvests from both law enforcement personnel and those with criminal intent. Patience and persistence by YTEP staff, as well as their experience of the local area and community members, eventually made it possible to obtain the necessary connections, local permissions and keys to enter gates. The extra time requirements delayed the initial start of the temporal dataset for some reaches by up to 3 months; however, the research goal of obtaining 1 full year of data was achieved over the full course of the grant. The outcome includes accurate, updated maps necessary to the goals of the project and increase the capacity across Tribal Departments to manage and protect Tribal resources and public health.
Difficulty 3. The extensive, multiyear drought in California and the subsequent low water levels and flows of the mainstem Klamath River, its tributaries and common water table have made locating tributary reaches or pools with enough water depth to allow probe placement challenging. Many tributaries have gone subsurface months before and/or further distances upstream than any previously recorded time. In some cases, this made it impossible to meet this project's initial guideline of placing probes on tributaries within 1/4 mile upstream of their confluence with the Klamath River. After discussions between Tribal staff and EPA grant officers, it was not considered a significant change to the QAPP, and it was resolved by revising the field protocols to specify that the placement of probes should be at first upstream pool if inadequate flows are present within the bottom 1/4 mile reach. This allows for the basic sampling of important tributaries to remain and continues the data collection necessary to inform risk management and planning to protect both human and environmental health.
However, working on location within the numerous sub-watersheds targeted by the project has resulted in the valuable but unforeseen outcome of providing documentation and record of significant local drought impacts that show reduced areas of ground water recharge. Not only have numerous small tributaries in the Lower Klamath basin experienced extreme reduced flows that have resulted in dry creek beds in their lower reaches, but the many small lakes in the upper elevations of the region have diminished areas, including, Divide Lake, the Split Lakes, Turtle Lake, Twin Lakes, and especially Youngs Lake, which during this project shrunk to a mere 6-foot pool.
Difficulty 4. Through the monthly conference/training calls with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), it became clear that the staffing requirements (1.5 to 2 FTE) for the operation and maintenance of their Local Environmental Observer (LEO) Network is not currently feasible with YTEP's capacity and was not incorporated into the project. This included dropping the recommended weekly newsletter and Web updates that ANTHC recommends for a robust community involvement with LEO. It is expected that, despite in-person meetings and trainings, the LEO Network will not be feasible for smaller Tribes, local governments and communities to operate at the level it currently enjoys in Alaska.
It is nonetheless a valuable tool to network, connect and document observations of local climate change effects, good and bad, to the communities and people's lives. It offers a listening platform for learning the nature of local changes, insights on causes and specific implications to the Yurok Tribe's traditional activities. Furthermore, the LEO Network encourages communication between communities, academic institutions and resource agencies to increase understanding about climate and other drivers of change and to develop appropriate adaptation strategies through the use of combined traditional knowledge, western science and modern technology.
Through the funding of this STAR grant, the Yurok Tribe has facilitated the growth of the LEO Network to include the Yurok community as a hub and helped fund the development of cell phone apps for the posting of information onto network maps - perhaps one of the most broad-based, useful outcomes from this project. The functioning app (available for download to both Apple and Android products) allows a quick and easy interface to internet mapping that generates a robust and effective environmental health surveillance system. This increases access and improves resource management by the local sharing of observations about the occurrence and timing of environmental events, in particular the connections between climate change, environmental impacts, traditional food resources and potential health effects.
For example, in recent years, a shift in the timing of the growth in the locally harvested seaweeds has been observed, which has resulted in many Tribal members being unsure of when to harvest and unable to gather this traditional food. The traditional seaweed undergoes a rapid "leafy" growth spurt that is short-lived, but the timing for harvesting has corresponded to other environmental cues that signaled to the upriver communities that it was time to travel to the ocean. In this way, seaweed has always been a shared resource, effectively binding coastal and river communities and facilitating food resiliency by the complementing resources of the two different ecosystems within Yurok Territory. Currently, due to the unpredictable shifting of climate, the cues are no longer valid. However, with the use of LEO, it is now quick and easy to post when and where the seaweed appears to mobilize the harvest communities. The Yurok LEO Final Report - 2015 - 2016 documents the process utilized to develop the Yurok LEO Network and highlights some successful postings.
Conclusions:
The Yurok Tribe is being proactive to mitigate the threats to the resources and ecosystem they depend on for their livelihoods, identity, culture, economy, diet, health, spirituality, ceremonies and overall wellbeing. Yurok Tribal elders and community members have a wealth of traditional and community knowledge that has informed all stages of this grant and that provides strength - or adaptive capacity - to enable and empower the Tribe to adapt to climate change. Quotes from them are featured throughout the project's primary deliverable, The Yurok Tribe Climate Change Adaptation Plan, including their understandings of how the climate has already been changing, insights into species' behaviors and roles within ecosystems, and knowledge on the resilience of ecosystems and people and how non-climatic factors are interacting. Yurok traditional values and practices consistently have been a source of resilience for the Yurok people and have helped the Yurok endure their historic traumas.
This project has helped separate and tease out of the national and regional climate projections reasonable expectations for local climate change impacts to Yurok Reservation and Ancestral Territory. These are expected to include increased extreme weather events; sea level rise; shifting precipitation and runoff patterns; and temperature increases to air and, subsequently, to surface waters. Warmer air and water temperatures will have significant impacts on water resources and aquatic habitats, including shifts in aquatic species distribution, population and changes in life-stage timing; increased concentrations of some pollutants and water-borne pathogens; and increased eutrophication and algal growth in some water bodies, along with increases in associated toxins.
Overall, water sources within the Yurok Reservation and Ancestral Territory have become less reliable as a result of reductions in precipitation in the Upper Klamath Basin, as well as earlier runoff of snowmelt. This is expected to continue to generate lower mainstem Klamath River flows and reduced groundwater levels and the recharge of aquifers that in turn support -
- Public and private drinking water supplies and infrastructure
- Recreation and tourism
- Irrigation for food production and community gardens
- The fishing industry, both subsistence and commercial
- Aquatic ecosystems and ecosystem services
Specific threats are expected to endanger both the many perched, upper-elevation wetlands in Yurok Territory and their wildlife communities that are dependent on high groundwater levels and inputs from numerous springs and seeps. Also, wetlands along the coast may be impacted by changing water quality after flooding resulting from potential sea level rise. In addition, other examples of climate change impacts influencing the reliability of local water supplies include (1) increases in forest fire damage in watersheds that lessen the capacity for water infiltration and percolation into recharge zones that are sources of water supply and (2) the impairment of freshwater supplies to community wells from saltwater intrusion resulting from sea level rise.
Direct Benefits to the Local Tribal Community
Climate change poses a significant threat for the Yurok Tribe, which is a natural resource-reliant community with many Tribal lifeways both culturally and economically dependent on water quantity and quality. By establishing a monitoring network that provided baseline data on the Reservation's tributaries and identifying areas of water resource vulnerability and resiliency, the potential impacts on Yurok food and drinking water security and tribal health can be realistically assessed. This reinforces and enables the longstanding legacy of Yurok environmental stewardship that has been practiced since time immemorial to build on the Tribe's existing capacity and their many strengths to prepare for climate change while pursuing traditional and innovative actions to maintain subsistence livelihoods, food sovereignty, and Tribal health, not only on the Yurok Reservation but inclusive of the broader Ancestral Territory.
A direct benefit to Tribal membership is an increase in the Tribe's adaptive capacity to prepare and respond to changes in their water resources. The STAR-funded research - particularly the water quality, flow measurements, GIS data and mapping - has helped in the understanding of how upper slope anthropological demands on the Lower Klamath River tributaries affect both the water quality and quantity reaching those living downslope and the interconnected ecological impacts to wildlife and cold water refugia of the mainstem Klamath. For example, the tributary watershed boundary maps were utilized to isolate which creeks were being impacted by illegal water diversions by marijuana growers, and those creeks with Tribal Members' domestic water intakes in them are to receive priority enforcement actions. By using the grant-generated research as a decision-making tool, it is directly helping the Tribal Council, Yurok Public Safety and the membership to ensure adequate supplies of freshwater for their health and wellbeing.
A second point is that the production of comparable quality data generated in this grant results in a defensible basis for data integration across departments and agencies and data comparisons across programs and jurisdictions, and it allows larger-scale and more complex assessments of local conditions within regional and national climate change modeling. This has allowed the building of partnerships and developed staff capacity on technical and scientific issues surrounding climate change, research, state of the science, and planning and response efforts. Thus, the expanded monitoring program and resulting data directly benefit and enable the development of comprehensive Tribal planning and policies for long-term comprehensive safeguards for Tribal members' health and the stewardship of the Yurok environment and resources. One example is that during summer and fall 2015, there were several Tribal members who reported gastro-intestinal complaints. Upon review of our bacteria testing in their communities' drinking source water, we were able to document the presence of high levels of coliform and E. coli and share this information with the Tribal Council, Yurok Planning Department, Yurok Indian Housing, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9 offices and Indian Health Services. Immediate actions were taken to improve the water treatment for two communities. The grant-generated data also provided the supporting documentation for the larger of the two communities to obtain both funding and approval to upgrade their system and transfer one of the private community systems to a public utility.
An additional benefit of this grant funding to the larger Yurok community is that through the community scoping with the Tribal Council, Tribal membership and Tribal staff were able to share information on climate change, consider potential impacts, and identify Tribal priorities for Climate Change research and planning, This has developed cross-educational opportunities between the science-based expected climate-induced changes to the local environment, as well as those actions needed to ensure feasible preparations at the local community level for the varied impacts of a changing climate. Also, the sharing of Yurok traditional ecological knowledge across staffing departments and divisions within the Tribe has increased the awareness of local knowledge and increased its potential to be incorporated into technical and scientific priority setting for climate change research, planning and response.
A final benefit to several environmental staff that are also Tribal members is the capacity building within YTEP. Two environmental technicians and one specialist were able to attend training at the local community college to acquire software skills and integrated concepts necessary to accurately and proficiently use Microsoft Office Professional 2013. These skills not only have made them able to enter the grant's field data but increased their professional skills and job security within the Tribe.
References:
GIS Stream Temperature Modeling of Yurok Ancestral Territory: https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/boise/AWAE/projects/NorWeST/downloads/publications/17Asarian-YurokStreamTempsSSNs_FinalReport_20170908.pdf
Yurok Tribe Climate Change Adaptation Plan for Water & Aquatic Resources, 2014-2018: http://www.yuroktribe.org/departments/ytep/documents/Yurok_Climate_Plan_WEB.pdf
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 16 publications for this projectProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.