An Interactive Website for Fish Habitat Conservation in the Midwest and Great Plains

The Midwest and Great Plains have assessed fish habitat quality to meet National Fish Habitat Action Plan goals, and need to share results among decision makers, interested parties, and the general public. In this paper, we present an interactive website to support habitat management decisions, project identification, education and outreach. Our website provides three major functions: habitat conservation, habitat quality, and project application. Habitat conservation allows project query using multiple criteria and displays results in both map and table views. Habitat quality shares results from habitat assessment including final reports, map books, geodatabase, and interactive web maps. Each FHP has an individual list of response variables identified, and each response variable is assessed for three indices including predictions, CNQI, and CASI. Together, there are 31 response variables and 93 models. The 93 models are analyzed at the NHD+ catchment level, and aggregated to HUC12. The study area covers six FHPs, which may overlap geographically. To meet these requirements, we design and publish 93 GIS services for all combinations of FHP, response variable, and model index. Each GIS service has four datasets, FHP boundary, HUC 8, HUC 12, and NHD+ catchment. For efficiency of web mapping, the design of GIS service is scale-dependent. The web map is a mashup of GIS service and Google Maps, the latter was chosen because of user familiarity. Users may click on map to identify features at FHP 8, FHP 12, and NHD+ catchment levels. The third function, project application, allows users to apply new projects online. In conclusion, this interactive website helps the Midwest and Great Plains establish a cyberinfrastructure to share habitat quality assessment data/services.