Data from: Mediating water temperature increases due to livestock and global change in high elevation meadow streams of the Golden Trout Wilderness

Rising temperatures due to climate change are pushing the thermal limits
of many species, but how climate warming interacts with other
anthropogenic disturbances such as land use remains poorly understood. To
understand the interactive effects of climate warming and livestock
grazing on water temperature in three high elevation meadow streams in the
Golden Trout Wilderness, California, we measured riparian vegetation and
monitored water temperature in three meadow streams between 2008 and 2013,
including two “resting” meadows and one meadow that is partially grazed.
All three meadows have been subject to grazing by cattle and sheep since
the 1800s and their streams are home to the imperiled California golden
trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss aguabonita). In 1991, a livestock exclosure was
constructed in one of the meadows (Mulkey), leaving a portion of stream
ungrazed to minimize the negative effects of cattle. In 2001, cattle were
removed completely from two other meadows (Big Whitney and Ramshaw), which
have been in a “resting” state since that time. Inside the livestock
exclosure in Mulkey, we found that riverbank vegetation was both larger
and denser than outside the exclosure where cattle were present, resulting
in more shaded waters and cooler maximal temperatures inside the
exclosure. In addition, between meadows comparisons showed that water
temperatures were cooler in the ungrazed meadows compared to the grazed
area in the partially grazed meadow. Finally, we found that predicted
temperatures under different global warming scenarios were likely to be
higher in presence of livestock grazing. Our results highlight that land
use can interact with climate change to worsen the local thermal
conditions for taxa on the edge and that protecting riparian vegetation is
likely to increase the resiliency of these ecosystems to climate change.