Assessing Alaska's River Systems for Improved Management and Conservation of Fish Habitats and the Fisheries They Support

While Alaska contains some of the country’s most pristine landscapes, human actions including mines, logging, and barriers can threaten Alaskan rivers and the fisheries they support. The 2015 National Fish Habitat Partnership’s inland assessment of Alaska was developed to assess the risk of stream habitats from anthropogenic landscape disturbances to aid in efforts to manage and restore stream habitats.  Our assessment approach integrated feedback from Alaskan fish habitat partnerships and other stakeholders to ensure development of an effective and useful product.  For a majority of the state, our assessment of landscape disturbances was conducted within large watersheds (i.e., 12-digit hydrologic units), but in Southeast Alaska, we conducted the assessment using landscape information attributed to local and network catchments developed for stream reaches represented by the 1:63,360 National Hydrography Dataset.  Assessment results show that the highest relative risks of habitat alteration from landscape stressors occur around urban centers and along transportation corridors, and with the finer-scale assessment in southeast Alaska, results indicate a more spatially-explicit characterization of stressors.  The outcomes of this assessment offer an unprecedented view of the state of Alaska’s fluvial habitats and will aid natural resource managers and decision-makers working to restore and protect Alaska’s fluvial habitats.