Modeling the Effects of Land Use and Climate Change on Lake Fishes in Michigan

Understanding how climate and land use changes will impact lake habitats and fishes is critical for developing effective management and conservation strategies.  To better understand the vulnerability of inland lake resources to climate and land use changes, we first characterized the landscape context of Michigan lakes across multiple spatial scales. We then used classification trees to develop models predicting presence-absence and abundance of Michigan lake fishes based upon landscape variables.  Model accuracies ranged from 60 to 80% and included variables that characterize lake position, size, connectivity, and thermal regime.  We then used these models to estimate statewide patterns of species distribution and abundance and to assess how these patterns will likely change under projected land use and climate change scenarios.