Bringing Endpoint Modeling into Ohio River Basin Fish and Mussel Habitat Management

During 2010-11, the Ohio River Fish Habitat Partnership (ORBFHP) in conjunction with the Southeastern Aquatic Resource Partnership (SARP) assessed stream and river habitat within the Ohio River Basin.   Due to the scale of this effort, the partnerships worked with Downstream Strategies to construct and utilize a series of GIS-based endpoint models.  These models were used to determine the limiting natural and anthropogenic variables, quality of stream/river habitat, and potential for systemic or watershed restoration.  The modeled factors were MICD, a small stream index, presence/absence of intolerant mussels, percent intolerant fish, presence/absence of great river fish species, presence/absence of three redhorse species, and presence/absence of smallmouth bass.

The current presentation demonstrates how the ORBFHP and SARP utilized the strongest predictive models to delineate within HUC 8s which stream reaches were currently most suitable for our targeted fish and mussels and which reaches and subwatersheds have the highest probability of restoration success.  Additionally, by using a decision support screening tool based on the endpoint occurrences the partnerships understand which habitat influencing variables drive the occurrence of our targeted organisms, those variables that can be manipulated to improve habitat conditions, and what level of change in limiting factors is necessary to result in the restoration of the targeted organisms.  Examples are utilzed to show how this process and resulting products can benefit decision makers, conservation managers, and watershed groups at varying geographic scales.