Salmon Population Decline

Watercolor and Colored Pencil, 2015

I created a series about some of the major impacts of global warming that I witnessed in Washington State this summer, using scientific data to show how the drought is devastating the state.

Salmon Population Decline uses population data about the Coho species. Seeing the rivers and reservoirs looking so barren was frightening; the snowpack in the mountains and on the glaciers supplies a lot of the water for this region, and the additional lack of precipitation has greatly depleted the state’s hydrosphere. Consequently, the water level in the rivers the salmon spawn in is very low, and not cold enough for them. The salmon are depicted swimming along the length of the graph, following its current. While salmon can swim upstream, it is becoming more of an uphill battle with lower stream flow and higher temperatures. This image depicts the struggle their population is facing as their spawning habitat declines.

Reference: http://blogs.agu.org/fromaglaciersperspective/2015/06/08/salmon-challenges-from-glaciers-to-the-salish-sea/