Establishing Priorities: The Importance of Connections and Costs in Broad-Scale Freshwater Conservation

Ecological connectivity and the costs associated with restoring or protecting connections are important considerations for effective freshwater conservation. Accountancy of connections within large freshwater systems requires access to spatial data that depict the distribution and connections of water bodies across the entire system. Identifying priorities to restore or protect ecological connections also has a range of associated socio-economic costs. Acquiring data on these socio-economic costs can require additional effort from conservation organizations. Here, we discuss datasets and methods that can assist decisions makers to effectively allocate resources to conserve connectivity between large rivers or lakes and their tributaries.  We present two ongoing case studies in the Great Lakes Basin and the Mississippi River Basin that illustrate the development of broad-scale conservation planning assessments that give full consideration to all waterway connections.  We demonstrate how researchers and decision makers can identify: a) where fish migrate, b) connections between systems, c) types of barriers that fish may encounter, and d) cost/benefit trade-offs. We discuss how these data can be used to identify priorities for the removal or improvement of structures that obstruct passage between these large systems. This research can yield insights in both fundamental and applied research that have broad regional and global applications.