Continental-scale nutrient and contaminant delivery by Pacific salmon
| dc.contributor.author | Brandt, Jessica E. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Wesner, Jeff F. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Ruggerone, Gregory | |
| dc.contributor.author | Jardine, Timothy D | |
| dc.contributor.author | Eagles-Smith, Collin A. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Ruso, Gabrielle E. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Stricker, Craig A. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Voss, Kristofor A. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Walters, David M. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-11-01T07:19:49Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-11-01T07:19:49Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-10-09 | |
| dc.description | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. | |
| dc.description.abstract | The movement of large amounts of nutrients by migrating animals has ecological benefits for recipient food webs that may be offset by co-transported contaminants. Salmon spawning migrations are archetypal of this process, carrying marine-derived materials to inland ecosystems where they stimulate local productivity but also enhance contaminant exposure. Pacific salmon abundance and biomass are higher now than in the last century, reflecting substantial shifts in community structure8 that probably altered nutrient versus contaminant delivery. Here we combined nutrient and contaminant concentrations with 40 years of annual Pacific salmon returns to quantify how changes in community structure influenced marine to freshwater inputs to western North America. Salmon transported tonnes of nutrients and kilograms of contaminants to freshwaters annually. Higher salmon returns (1976–2015) increased salmon-derived nutrient and contaminant inputs by 30% and 20%, respectively. These increases were dominated by pink salmon, which are short-lived, feed lower in marine food webs than other salmon species, and had the highest nutrient-to-contaminant ratios. As a result, the delivery of nutrients increased at a greater rate than the delivery of contaminants, and salmon inputs became more ecologically beneficial over time. Even still, contaminant loadings may represent exposure concerns for some salmon predators. The Pacific salmon example demonstrates how long-term environmental changes interact with nutrient and contaminant movement across large spatial scales and provides a model for exploring similar patterns with other migratory species. | |
| dc.description.sponsorship | US Geological Survey Environmental Health, Contaminant Biology Program | |
| dc.description.version | Peer Reviewed | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Brandt, J.E., Wesner, J.S., Ruggerone, G.T. et al. Continental-scale nutrient and contaminant delivery by Pacific salmon. Nature 634, 875–882 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07980-2 | |
| dc.identifier.doi | 10.1038/s41586-024-07980-2 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10388/16233 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Nature | |
| dc.rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/ | |
| dc.subject | nutrient delivery | |
| dc.subject | contaminant delivery | |
| dc.subject | Pacific salmon | |
| dc.subject | contaminant loadings | |
| dc.title | Continental-scale nutrient and contaminant delivery by Pacific salmon | |
| dc.type | Article |