Linking River Management to Species Conservation Using Dynamic Landscape-scale Models

Efforts to conserve stream and river biota could benefit from tools that allow managers to evaluate landscape-scale changes in species distributions in response to water management decisions. We present a framework and methods for integrating hydrology, geographic context and metapopulation processes to simulate effects of changes in streamflow on fish occupancy dynamics across a landscape of interconnected stream segments. We illustrate this approach using a 482 km2 catchment in the southeastern US supporting 50 or more stream fish species. A spatially distributed, deterministic and physically based hydrologic model is used to simulate daily streamflow for sub-basins composing the catchment. We use geographic data...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Rivers, Streams and Lakes, Southeast CASC, Water, Coasts and Ice, aquatic biodiversity, fluvial geomorphology, All tags... freshwater fishes, hydrologic models, metapopulation dynamics, Fewer tags

An evaluation of relations between flow regime components, stream characteristics, and species traits and meta-demographic rate of warm-water stream fishes: Implications for aquatic resource management

Fishery biologists are increasingly recognizing the importance of considering the dynamic nature of streams when developing streamflow policies. Such approaches require information on how flow regimes influence the physical environment and how those factors, in turn, affect species-specific demographic rates. A more cost-effective alternative could be the use of dynamic occupancy models to predict how species are likely to respond to changes in flow. To appraise the efficacy of this approach, we evaluated relative support for hypothesized effects of seasonal streamflow components, stream channel characteristics, and fish species traits on local extinction, colonization, and recruitment (meta-demographic rates) of...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Flint River, Rivers, Streams and Lakes, Southeast CASC, Water, Coasts and Ice, colonization, All tags... dynamic occupancy, extinction, flow regime, Fewer tags