Evaluating Inland Fisheries over Large Regions: Using a Landscape Approach to Enhance Conservation Opportunities

The natural potential of freshwater fisheries is constrained in part by landscape factors, including limitations resulting from anthropogenic stressors.  Attempts to assess fisheries potential in multiple water bodies over large regions using both natural and anthropogenic landscape data can be a cost-effective and efficient technique to identify stressors to fisheries and to prioritize and apply actions to achieve fisheries management objectives.  The basis for such assessments depends on a landscape approach, which asserts that landscape factors of regions drained by freshwater systems can influence habitats and fisheries they support.  Such efforts have been facilitated with greater availability of remotely-sensed information and through advancements in GIS and database technologies, and they are increasingly viewed as effective management tools, especially when site-specific data may be limited.  This presentation describes an assessment of rivers of the conterminous United States conducted using a landscape approach and highlights how mangers may use results to more effectively conserve fluvial fisheries.  Besides demonstrating this application of the approach, this presentation describes the potential for conducting similar work in other regions, underscoring how the landscape approach can enhance conservation of freshwater fisheries globally.