Water temperatures are warming in lakes and streams, resulting in the loss of many native fish. Given clear passage, coldwater stream fishes can take refuge upstream when larger streams become too warm. Likewise, many Midwestern lakes “thermally stratify” resulting in warmer waters on top of deeper, cooler waters. Many of these lakes are connected to threatened streams. To date, assessments of the effects of climate change on fish have mostly ignored lakes, and focused instead on streams. Because surface waters represent a network of habitats, an integrated assessment of stream and lake temperatures under climate change is necessary for decision-making. This work  informed the preservation of lake/stream linkages, prioritization restoration strategies, and stocking efforts for sport fish. This project employed state-of-the-science methods to model historical and future thermal habitat for nearly ten thousand lakes

Historical climate data for the Midwestern U.S. show substantial regional variability in the occurrence of extreme rainfall events.  Climate projections for the region based on both statistically downscaled General Circulation Models and Regional Climate Models show significant inter-model variability in the magnitude and frequency of extreme rainfall events.  As a result, these climate projections cannot be used alone to adaptively manage water resources in a changing climate.  We believe that storm transposition provides an effective way to evaluate the vulnerability from extreme rainfall and flooding. We have reconstructed the 2008 storm that caused catastrophic damage across parts of south-central Iowa and Wisconsin.  We are currently using an existing hydrodynamic model of the Yahara Lakes (http://infosyahara.org/) to estimate the extent of damage that would have occurred had the storm been centered over the lakes