So Close but so Far: A Saga of How Data Consistency Issues Have Affected the Nfhp National Habitat Assessment

The National Fish Habitat Partnership’s (NFHP) mission is to protect, restore and enhance the nation's fish and aquatic communities through partnerships that foster fish habitat conservation and improve the quality of life for the American people.   NFHP implements its guided by a revolutionary National Fish Habitat Assessment (Assessment) whose goal is to develop a clear picture of the condition of all U.S. waters to the shelf.  The Assessment is a decision support system measuring six key processes (Connectivity, Hydrology, Geomorphology, Water Quality, Material Recruitment and Transport, and Energy Flow) to facilitate planning protect intact and rehabilitate impaired habitat.  At this time, data is unavailable for any of these processes at the appropriate scale using standardized methodologies on a national basis which has forced NFHP Board to use a landscape approach.  Equally problematic is the lack of consistently collected fish and shellfish data restricting the ability to develop stressor-response relationships.  While the Assessment has informed decisions by NFHP, the lack of standardized datasets not allowed the Assessment to: fulfill its vision of measuring each process; determine if the process is within the expected range for the system; and direct action to protect or rehabilitate processes.