A view of Mount Baker in Washington. Photo by Lhb1239 via Wikipedia

The Nooksack Tribe is studying glaciers in Washington as part of its focus on climate change.

The glaciers on Mount Baker are slowly melting. Because the run-off feeds into the Nooksack River, the tribe is concerned about the immediate and long-term effects on its way of life.

“Climate change will impact the ability of tribal members to harvest fish in the future,” Oliver Grah, the tribe's water resources manager, told the Associated Press.

Water levels are critical to the survival of salmon and other fish in the river. Grah and Jezra Beaulieu, who is the tribe's water resources specialist, authored a paper in 2013 that stressed the importance of the issue.

The "tribe is dependent on these species, and being place-based, the tribe cannot move its geographic base or homeland to where salmon will be located under future climatic conditions," Grah and Beaulieu wrote in the paper, according to the Tribal Climate Change Profile Project at the University of Oregon.

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Scientists, tribe study shrinking Washington state glacier (A: 8/28)