Regional-, Landscape-, and Reach-Scale Models for Implementing Riverscape Approaches with Salmonids in the Pacific Northwest, USA

Publication of the RiverScapes paper in 2002 by Fausch et al. presaged rapid advances in the ability to monitor and model lotic ecosystems and the natural world. In the decade since, new techniques have emerged that provide high-resolution spatial and temporal mapping, modeling, and monitoring of biophysical attributes, which fill important deficiencies at the meso-scale highlighted in the RiverScapes paper. Concurrent advances have also occurred at micro- and macro-scales, which are equally important because patterns described at one scale are given context by higher-order phenomena and lower-order phenomena provide mechanistic understanding. We provide recent examples of new monitoring and modeling approaches for salmonids in the Pacific Northwest at macro-, meso-, and micro-scales that facilitate application of RiverScape concepts. Although tremendous progress was made during the last decade, key deficiencies yet remain, including the ability to link patterns and processes in lotic systems to the terrestrial domain, adequate understanding of fundamental and realized ecological niches so these can be accurately mapped to the physical environment, successful fusion of complementary data sources at similar scales, and explicit linkages of models across scales. Continued progress, however, will ultimately lead to nearly continuous space-time realizations of terrestrial-aquatic systems that may make distinctions among scales obsolete as summaries of biophysical features become possible at all scales and those most appropriate to the question under consideration are chosen. Such models and the management efficiencies they could enable will be needed to confront challenges posed by human population growth and climate change in the 21^st century and preserve the maximum amount of aquatic biodiversity.