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Water Quality in Pacific Northwest Urban and Urbanizing Aquatic Ecosystems

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Wild Salmonids in the Urbanizing Pacific Northwest

Abstract

Water quality in streams, lakes, reservoirs, wetlands, and estuaries affects salmonids at all life stages. Degraded water quality reduces habitat quality and depresses or even eliminates salmonid populations. The purpose of this chapter is to review important aspects of water quality and how those aspects are affected by urbanization, with a focus on North America’s Pacific Northwest, with an emphasis on Oregon. Water quality aspects discussed in this chapter center on physical aspects such as turbidity, temperature, and dissolved oxygen and on chemical aspects primarily the nutrients phosphorous and nitrogen. Toxic contaminants and the effects of waste water on water quality are treated in Chaps. 9 and 10.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Sensible heat exchange causes a change in temperature, whereas latent heat exchange occurs during a phase change such as from liquid to gas and does not result in a change in temperature. Accordingly, the process of evaporation transfers sensible heat from the air into latent heat during the phase change from liquid water to water vapor. The result is a sensible heat loss and a cooling of air temperature.

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  1. Department of Environmental Science and Management, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97207, USA

    J. Alan Yeakley

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  1. Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA

    J. Alan Yeakley

  2. Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA

    Kathleen G. Maas-Hebner

  3. Corvallis, Oregon, USA

    Robert M. Hughes

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Yeakley, J.A. (2014). Water Quality in Pacific Northwest Urban and Urbanizing Aquatic Ecosystems. In: Yeakley, J., Maas-Hebner, K., Hughes, R. (eds) Wild Salmonids in the Urbanizing Pacific Northwest. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8818-7_8

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