The Arkansas Times Climate Watch is the first free newsletter in Arkansas dedicated to exploring how Arkansans are adapting to climate change. Subscribe to get it in your inbox twice a month.
For the first time in two years, I’m making my way back to the Buffalo River for a quick paddling excursion. I’d ask for recommendations on what to do in the Jasper area, but by the time you’re reading this, I will already be driving back to Little Rock. (Send them anyways, I think I’ll be back!)
The breathtaking Buffalo River has long enchanted Arkansans. So much so that environmental organizers successfully pushed for it to become the nation’s first National River in 1972, run by the National Park System. And it seems like the rest of the world caught on as well. The Buffalo River saw a record 1.6 million visitors in 2024, according to National Park Service data. May, June and July are consistently the busiest months, with activity shifting downriver as the summer gets hotter.
But the free-flowing river is also in the heart of the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, a region getting hotter and hotter, along with the rest of the state and world. Between 2002 and 2021, average temperatures in the area warmed between 0.5 and 1 degree Fahrenheit, according to the fifth National Climate Assessment commissioned by the federal government. Half a degree to a one-degree increase doesn’t seem like a big deal, and the increase was lower than much of the rest of the South. But continued warming could have major impacts.
The latest federal climate assessment, published in 2023, suggests that the Ozarks have a high likelihood of experiencing 10 to 20 more extreme heat days a year in 2050 than was the norm between the years 1991 and 2020.
Those extreme heat days, with temperatures exceeding 95 F, will certainly be unpleasant for many of the tourists, who are at the river to paddle, fish and hike. But they are also projected to impact another population in the river that I hear many natives are quite fond of: smallmouth bass.
Before I left for my trip, I caught up with David Petersen, a former mathematics professor at UCA and an avid environmentalist and longtime member of the conservation group the Ozark Society. During Petersen’s tenure as president of the Ozark Society, the group battled the controversial C&H Hog Farm that had set up shop in the Buffalo River watershed, and now he’s being awarded the Neil Compton Award by the group for his years of work. (Compton was the environmentalist who founded the Ozark Society and led the fight against damming the Buffalo River.)
Now I’m no fisherman, I just don’t have the patience for it. But Petersen tells me that passionate anglers like him should be watching the effects of climate change on the Buffalo River, if for no other reason than to watch what happens to their smallmouth friends.
“They are a very strong fish, and they fight and jump. So this might be pugilistic, and beating a fish with the size of a pea for a brain shouldn’t excite me, but it does,” Petersen said.
Petersen went on to say catching smallmouth has always been a major draw because smallmouth have done well in the Buffalo River because of the cool, oxygen-rich water it finds there during the summer months. But if the river starts heating up, what’s going to happen to their population? It’s hard to know, because there isn’t much data on the actual water temperature of the river over time. But some researchers have tried to tackle the challenge.
Christopher Middaugh, a research biologist at the Game and Fish Commission, and Daniel Magoulick, a research professor at the University of Arkansas, asked that same question. Their study, published in 2018, built a model of the effects of climate change on smallmouth bass using data on smallmouth bass populations in the Buffalo River, river discharge data, and air temperature data from a monitoring site near Harrison.
Using the baseline data, they modeled what would happen if the area heated up by 5 to 7 degrees on average and found that two outcomes are likely, depending on how the environment responds to the additional heat. If warmer temperatures combine with decreased rainfall, flooding could reduce and smallmouth could continue to do well. But, if the increased heat leads to more flooding and severe drought, the Buffalo smallmouth bass populations could drop by half or more.
How much variability climate change causes in the Buffalo River watershed will be key to watch, Petersen said. Extreme weather events like major floods or drought have been limited so far in the watershed. But scientists predict climate change will make extreme events more and more likely, and he fears that if precipitation increases in the spring and creates more flooding, and droughts follow in the hot summer months, smallmouth bass will suffer.
The other thing to watch, Petersen said, is how the gravel beaches shift in the Buffalo River over time. A United States Geological Survey study in 2020 took an inventory of all the gravel beaches between 1992 and 2014 and found evidence of gravel storage shifting downstream–meaning there is evidence of shifting gravel in the riverbed, and more gravel may be making the river more shallow.
If the river is becoming wider and shallower over time, said Petersen, that is another issue for people to watch. A shallower river could expose smallmouth bass and other fish to more heat from the sun.
But ultimately, research on climate change and the Buffalo River is limited. There are too many unknowns, Petersen said, and as temperatures rise, it may be a game of wait and see.
On my radar:
I was in the Dickson Street Bookstore about three weeks ago and picked up a copy of Neil Compton’s “The Battle for the Buffalo River,” where he recounts their efforts to prevent the damming of the river and to preserve its free-flowing nature for generations. It was one of those buys where I didn’t know it existed until I saw it, and I wanted it. It’s been a pretty good read so far, and it really gets you thinking about how to build lasting coalitions for conservation work.
Also, make sure to find the time to check out the new exhibit by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts called The Longview. It’s an exhibit about the history of the conservation movement, and it is very well done. And free!
The Arkansas Times Climate Watch is the first free newsletter in Arkansas dedicated to exploring how Arkansans are adapting to climate change. Subscribe to get it in your inbox twice a month.
English (US) ·