Habitat Data Sharing

Habitat data are collected for a number of purposes: management and regulation of fish habitat, assessment of watershed health, and Clean Water Act applications. One important driver for the sharing of habitat data is the need of tribes and agencies at all levels to report on status and trends of fish and habitat and action effectiveness of restoration work at the project and watershed scales. In the Columbia River Basin, Federal Columbia River Power System BiOp reporting requirements are a specific and encompassing driver for monitoring. The Northwest Power and Conservation Council also looks to better understanding of fish habitat in the Columbia River Basin as part of their Fish and Wildlife Program. Region-wide, habitat is a limiting factor for many listed species and NOAA Fisheries requires habitat related data for fishery status assessments. Managers and data consumers are also interested in being able to quantify the effectiveness of habitat restoration actions at both the project and watershed scales and to be able to link these actions back to fish and other species.

In the 2013 Work Plan, the continuing activities of 2012 are consolidated into two topic areas, each of which will be supported by several activities. The first topic, stream habitat data sharing, looks broadly at regional sharing of stream habitat data, and the associated activities are intended to develop a better understanding of the needs, issues, and opportunities for sharing and to develop solutions to facilitate desired data exchanges. The second topic is focused on macroinvertebrate data sharing, and activities for 2013 target assisting the development of PNW standard taxonomic effort agreements and exploring the relationships between macroinvertebrate indicators and fish habitat quality.

For more information about PNAMP activities on this topic, click on "Events", "Documents" and "Key Documents" in the bottom right corner of this page.