Multispecies Aquatic Assessments
The Desert Fish Habitat Partnership, along with its partner the Western Native Trout Initiative, uses multispecies aquatic assessments to highlight the conservation value of watersheds for native fishes within its focal geography that includes 11 states and 180 native fish species. The assessments integrate information on known and modeled native fish distributions, riverine connectivity, and landscape condition and threats. The conservation values for watersheds are scaled between 0 (low value) and 1 (high value) and have been used to evaluate the landscape context of projects proposed to the partnerships for funding – that is, answering the question whether projects proposed to the partnership for funding occur in high values watersheds within a specific river basin.
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The conservation value of watersheds for each assessment can be explored through this webmap:
A general paper describing how these assessments were completed and their need can be found here.
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Reports for each basin assessment are below: