Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment: Brook Trout (Vermont)

This species was identified as highly vulnerable to climate change because of the following factors:

• Increase in average annual temperature
• Increases in average summer and average winter temperatures
• More frequent and more intense hot days
• Longer periods of low flows during the summer
• More frequent short-term droughts
• Requires specialized habitat (coldwater streams)
• Sensitive to invasive species and disease that may increase or arrive with climate change (whirling disease, competition with non-native fish)
• Indirect impacts from hemlock wooly adelgid, which kill trees shading streams (provide temperature reduction)
• Genetic alteration from stocked trout in wild populations

The factors below decrease this species' vulnerability to climate change:

• Ability to move across the landscape and/or disperse relatively long distances (if no barriers exist