EDT3: An Enhanced Salmonid Habitat Model for Species Recovery and Watershed Planning

We present EDT3, an enhanced release of the Ecosystem Diagnosis & Treatment (EDT) model. EDT is a salmonid habitat model that evaluates environmental conditions across life-cycle pathways in regard to potential capacity, productivity, abundance, and diversity of fish populations. EDT was developed more than twenty years ago as an application of the medical model of diagnosis and treatment to watershed and ESA recovery planning. Over that time, EDT has supported numerous watershed and species recovery plans throughout the Northwest and California. It has provided a scientific basis for identification and prioritization of habitat restoration and protection and the basis for investments in habitat restoration. EDT3 represents a major modernization of the software and reconfiguration of the EDT platform to provide greater transparency and increased flexibility. The enhanced platform provides the ability to create customized watershed models, incorporate new species-habitat relationships, and perform a wide variety of comparisons and evaluations. These capabilities allow EDT 3 to incorporate emerging science on salmonid-habitat relationships and evaluate the implications of the latest research on management decisions. EDT3 is currently supporting habitat status and trends monitoring, evaluation of watershed enhancement measures, and the assessment of impacts of climate change on species recovery and habitat priorities.