Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership Species-Habitat Matrix
Dates
Assessment Date
2009-08
Summary
The Species-Habitat Matrix is an evaluation of the importance of benthic habitats as space for shelter, feeding, and breeding by coastal fishes and motile invertebrates in ACFHP’s four subregions. The analysis quantified the relationship between over 100 different species across four life stages and 26 different habitats.
Summary
The Species-Habitat Matrix is an evaluation of the importance of benthic habitats as space for shelter, feeding, and breeding by coastal fishes and motile invertebrates in ACFHP’s four subregions. The analysis quantified the relationship between over 100 different species across four life stages and 26 different habitats.
The primary purpose of the ACFHP Species-Habitat Matrix is to provide a starting point for
prioritizing habitats (on both a coastwide and regional basis) in order to focus the protection and
restoration efforts of ACFHP. It is a conservation planning tool to evaluate the relative importance
of various coastal, estuarine, and freshwater habitats in terms of their value to a number of selected
fish and invertebrate species. Specifically, the Matrix evaluates the importance of different habitat
types as shelter, nursery, feeding, or spawning areas for each species. The goal is to provide an index
of habitat value through this one lens. The Matrix is limited in that it does not consider other
important functions of habitat that also benefit each species. Filtering water, processing nutrients,
securing sediments, maintaining dissolved oxygen levels, and other ecosystem functions are critical
for fishes and invertebrates, but are not considered in the analysis in order to keep the matrix and
analyses simple and manageable. However, the additional ecosystem functions of habitats are
considered separately in conservation planning in combination with the Matrix results.
