Upper Colorado River Basin Catchment Conservation Ranks
Summary
Conservation rank data for each drainage catchments in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Some smaller catchments were not ranked. Catchments are the drainage area (local watersheds) for each individual stream segment within the 1:100,000 scale National Hydrography Plus Version 1 (NHDPlusV1) dataset. The NHDplus catchments have been ranked (valued) based on the representation of native fish species given the threats to their persistence (i.e., non-native fish species, land use, and habitat fragmentation). The ranking process placed importance on areas with several native species as well as areas important to individual species with restricted distributions and so is not simply a species “hot spot” assessment. Catchments were assigned [...]
Summary
Conservation rank data for each drainage catchments in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Some smaller catchments were not ranked. Catchments are the drainage area (local watersheds) for each individual stream segment within the 1:100,000 scale National Hydrography Plus Version 1 (NHDPlusV1) dataset. The NHDplus catchments have been ranked (valued) based on the representation of native fish species given the threats to their persistence (i.e., non-native fish species, land use, and habitat fragmentation). The ranking process placed importance on areas with several native species as well as areas important to individual species with restricted distributions and so is not simply a species “hot spot” assessment. Catchments were assigned ranks between 0 and 1 where the higher numbers predict higher conservation importance.
The conservation priority rankings provide an ecologically based tool that can aid in the process to strategically identify and implement conservation actions.