Enhancing a National View of River Condition for Improved Management and Conservation of Fluvial Fish Habitats

The National Fish Habitat Partnership (NFHP) promotes conservation of fish habitats throughout the United States.  Supporting NFHP’s mission, we conducted a national assessment of river habitats in 2010 and are completing a refined assessment for 2015.  Various data have been compiled to a common spatial framework for this effort, and examples of disturbance datasets include stream catchment and buffer summaries of human land uses, mines in catchments, and metrics characterizing river fragmentation by dams.  We have also assembled a national coverage of stream fish distributions to quantify condition based on fish response to disturbances.  Assessment results provide stream-reach specific condition estimates and identify most limiting disturbances to reaches.  While these results are insightful, more information are needed for decisions on where and how to prioritize management actions.  This talk emphasizes other information that could be integrated into our spatial framework and approaches for using those data with assessment results for enhanced decision making.  Examples include conservation status of landscapes, creel surveys, and recreational targets for waterbodies throughout river networks.  Such datasets offer insights into services provided by river systems and would allow for more informed decisions on management actions, benefitting NFHP and other partners throughout the Nation.