Climate change is altering rivers in the Scottish Highlands. Already, lower summer rainfall and higher air temperatures are contributing to lower summer flows and warmer streams. This is changing the habitat for aquatic ecosystems, and cold-water species such as Atlantic salmon will probably be adversely affected. At the same time, various policy drivers linked to climate adaptation (e.g. carbon sequestration, biofuel production etc,) are likely to increase the cover of forests in Scotland over the coming decades. One such driver is to mitigate rising stream temperatures by providing riparian shading and reducing short wave radiation inputs to streams. However, forests “use” more wa