Datasets created:

To accomplish these goals, the Iowa GAP team prepared an assortment of datasets that led to the creation of three main datasets:

• Iowa streams and rivers
• Iowa fish habitat models for 157 species
• Iowa land stewardship (ownership and management)

For more information about Iowa’s Aquatic Gap Program, please visit their website.

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Objectives:

The following objectives will assist in characterization of biodiversity of aquatic habitats of Kansas:

• Define ranges all fish and mussel species within ecologically-distinct drainage basins using data compiled from known records
• Determine species richness by valley segments within these drainage basins.
• Define habitat affinities for each species by valley segment characteristics.
• Predict occurrence of each species to areas where collections have not occurred by extrapolation from habitat affinities.

We will use methods developed by the Missouri Aquatic GAP pilot project.  Our data will be in a format compatable with that of surrounding states.

For more information about the Kansas Aquatic Gap Program, please visit their website.

Over the past 175 years, significant changes have occurred in many of Michigan’s recreationally and commercially important fish populations. These changes have been largely due to the activities of humans. Four main categories of human disruption have occurred within the Great Lakes basin that have affected Michigan’s fisheries:
1. Increased fishing pressure, both commercial and recreational.
2. Intentional and accidental introductions of exotic species.
3. Changes in the land use patterns around the tributaries of the Great Lakes.
4. Physical and chemical changes in the environment caused by changing land use patterns, dams, effluents and atmospheric deposition of contaminants resulting from urban, agricultural and industrial development.

The goal of the Great Lakes Aquatic Gap Program is to map the species distributions and diversity of fish and other aquatic species and their habitats and to identify gaps in the conservation of these species.

For more information about the Michigan Aquatic Gap Program and its contributions to the Great Lakes Aquatic Gap Program, please visit the Michigan Aquatic Gap website.

• The principal goal of the Missouri Aquatic Gap pilot project was to identify riverine species, habitats, and ecosystems and species not adequately represented (i.e., gaps) in the matrix of conservation lands in Missouri.
• Provide spatially explicit data that could be used by natural resource professionals, legislators, and the public to make more informed decisions for prioritizing opportunities to fill these conservation gaps and to devise strategic approaches for developing effective long-term biodiversity conservation plans.
• As a pilot project for a national program, we also had the goal of developing a broadly applicable gap analysis methodology. We addressed this goal by ensuring that we utilized nationally standardized and available geospatial data wherever possible and also by devising a flexible conservation assessment methodology, which can accommodate the differences in data availability (e.g., biological) that exists among states across the United States.

The Missouri Resource Assessment Partnership (MoRAP) is also collaborating with the states of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota to complete a gap analysis of riverine biodiversity for the entire Missouri River Basin.

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Mission:

The mission of GAP is to provide regional assessments of the conservation status of native animal species and to facilitate the application of this information to land-management activities. OH-GAP accomplished this through

• mapping aquatic habitat types,
• mapping the predicted distributions of fish, crayfish, and bivalves,
• documenting the presence of aquatic species in areas managed for conservation,
• providing GAP results to the public, planners, managers, policy makers, and researchers, and
• building cooperation with multiple organizations to apply GAP results to state and regional management activities.

Gap analysis was conducted for the continuously flowing streams in Ohio. Lakes, reservoirs, wetlands, and the Lake Erie islands were not included in this analysis. The streams in Ohio are in the Lake Erie and Ohio River watersheds and pass through six of the level III ecoregions defined by Omernik(1987): the Eastern Corn Belt Plains, Southern Michigan/Northern Indiana Drift Plains, Huron/Erie Lake Plain, Erie Drift Plains, Interior Plateau, and the Western Allegheny Plateau.

For more information about Ohio’s Aquatic Gap Program, please visit their website.

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• Define range extents for all fish species within 11-digit hydrologic units occurring in South Dakota based on collection data.
• Determine species richness by 11-digit hydrologic units.
• Define habitat affinities for each fish species in South Dakota from literature review and collection sites.
• Predict occurrences of each fish species in river reaches by similarity of stream properties to habitat affinities and collection sites.
• Determine protection offered each fish species by hydrologic unit and river reach using stewardship layer previously created for SD-GAP.

To accomplish these objectives, we are following methods developed by Missouri GAP for a pilot Aquatic GAP project. This prototype focuses mainly on rivers. Lakes are included only if they have both an inlet and outlet stream, but fish species within a particular lake are not included.

For more information about the South Dakota Aquatic Gap Program, please visit their website.

For more information about the Wisconsin Aquatic Gap Program, please visit their website.

The primary purpose of the ACT/ACF Gap Analysis was to create databases and maps of aquatic species distributions in portions of the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT) and Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basins by developing predictive models relating species distribution to local and landscape-level features. The research was a collaborative effort among the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) GAP Analysis Program and USGS Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units (CFWRUs) of Alabama and Georgia, the Institute of Ecology and the University of Georgia.

Importance:

At the time of the study, federally listed animals included 6 mussels and 1 fish native to the Chattahoochee and Flint systems, 14 species of mussel and snail native to the ACT, and 10 fishes native to the ACT. At least 114 aquatic species in the ACT, Chattahoochee and Flint rivers are considered imperiled as a result of habitat degradation and loss (Ziewitz et al. 1995). Levels of species imperilment likely underestimate the actual extent of loss for unique stream types with high water quality and faunal integrity.

Conversion of forest to agriculture, urban growth and river impoundment for hydropower and navigation have altered stream and river habitat throughout much of the basins. The types of impacts on stream and river habitat include:

• dams and reservoirs impound approximately 44 % of the ACT and 64% of the Chattahoochee mainstem rivers
• some of the highest population growth rates in the nation are in these regions, bringing urban sprawl, impervious surface proliferation, and increasing pressures on streams for water supply
• approximately 16 water supply reservoirs are in planning phases for construction on streams in the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Chattahoochee and Flint systems in Georgia (R. Goodloe, USFWS, personal communication)
• interstate controversy and changes in legislation are occurring over water use in these systems and water allocation to downstream states

The intense and growing competition for water in these systems – to support population growth, expanding agriculture, for industry and hydropower, and to provide for healthy stream communities – reflects the urgency with which scientifically sound tools are needed to facilitate landscape-level planning and biodiversity conservation.

(text adapted from December 2004 project report)

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Lower Colorado River Basin (LCRB)

The Lower Colorado River Basin (LCRB) has one of the most imperiled fish faunas in the nation and information is needed to develop conservation strategies for the aquatic biota in this regions. Native fishes in the Colorado River Basin have been adversely impacted by modifications in fish communities, hydrology, and river morphology. Although researchers have suggested that full recovery of native fish communities in the Lower Colorado River Basin is not feasible due to political, societal, and economic reasons, the development of criteria for conservation will aid in any future considerations to protect aquatic species in the basin.

Importance:

• Reports of introduced species occurred as early as the 1870’s and the number of introduced species is now over twice that of native species (Young et al. 2001).
• Of the 31 fish species native to the LCRB, 17 are listed as Threatened or Endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act.
• The Lower Colorado River system provides irrigation water for about 4 million acres of agriculture fields and is a water source for 30 million people in the United States and Mexico (Mueller and Marsh 2002).
• Water diversions remove all water from reaches of the Lower Salt, Gila, and Colorado rivers and most historic wetlands in the Colorado River Delta; whereas other reaches have been inundated by reservoirs (Mueller and Marsh 2002).
• The morphology of the basin system has been highly altered by the 20 major dams and extensive system of canals and channelization projects (Mueller and Marsh 2002).
• Over 90 species have been introduced (Rinne and Janisch 1995) through intentional and unintentional introductions. These introductions are considered one of the primary causes for the decline of native fishes in the region.

Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB)

The Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) has one of the most threatened fish faunas in the United States with only 14 native fish species in the UCRB, most of which have declined in their range and abundance in the last 100 years. Native fishes in the Colorado River Basin have been adversely impacted by modifications to natural flow regimes, physical habitat, stream temperatures and other human-induced agents of environmental change, in addition to the negative effects of invasive species.  The development of criteria for conservation will aid future considerations to protect aquatic species in the basin.

Mission:

• Determine availability of existing published and unpublished data on the fish distributions and related habitat variables for the Upper Colorado River Basin.
• Document current land use, stewardship layers, geology, and other landscape-level habitat information (in coordination with the NFHI and Michigan St. Univ.) for the Upper Colorado River Basin.
• Develop a classification hierarchy for aquatic habitats to provide an ecological basis for determining conservation areas
• Identify landscape-level habitat metrics associated with native and non native fish presence in the Upper Colorado River Basin.
• Identify areas of high native fish biodiversity and the habitats associated with those areas for conservation efforts.
• Classify landscape-level threats to aquatic biota in the UCRB.
• Link fish distribution maps, landcover, stewardship, and other layers deemed useful by the stakeholders for the upper and lower Colorado River basins to create seamless layers for the Colorado River Basin.

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The goal of the Delaware River basin gap analysis project is to identify gaps in biodiversity conservation in the Delaware River basin, particularly in the freshwater riverine portion of the watershed. The databases and spatial data layers created for the project will provide resource managers with the information needed to make those management decisions critical to ensuring the health and diversity of the Delaware River basin and its inhabitants.

Datasets Created:

• Species inventory, including 217 fish species and 17 freshwater bivalves
• Biological data linked to stream segment dataset based on the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHDPlus)
• Data from the Northeast Aquatic Habitat Classification System integrated into stream segment database
• Socioeconomic data assembled and added to the stream segment dataset for use in assessing potential human stressors
• Initiated development of a hierarchical freshwater classification system for the Delaware River basin
• Generated Ecological Drainage Units using fish occurrence data and HUC8 watershed boundaries
• Work is under way on Aquatic Ecological System Types