Managing the Nation's Fish Habitat at Multiple Spatial Scales in a Rapidly Changing Climate PART 2

Fisheries and aquatic habitats throughout the United States are in dire need of protection or restoration because human activities have resulted in severe degradation of those habitats. In addition, future climatic changes will continue to affect human land use, temperature, and water flows. Natural resource managers need to identify and prioritize habitats so that limited time and funding can be focused on habitats in most need of protection now and under projected climate changes. This project used a team of scientists from the USGS, Kansas State University, Michigan State University, Penn State University, University of Minnesota-Duluth, University of Washington, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and Michigan Department of Natural Resources to model anticipated changes in fish habitat using downscaled global climate change models to predict alterations of water temperature, hydrology, and land-use under different possible scenarios because there is uncertainly in future projections. This project worked closely with the existing partnership-driven National Fish Habitat Action Plan (NFHAP) to link global climate change models and predicted land-use changes to the Nation’s aquatic habitats.
 
Image Credit: J. Whittier