Transcript Aquatic Analysis

Northern Great Plains
Riverine Analysis
Sarah Olimb
NPCN Fall Meeting
20 September 2013
Aquatic Ecosystem Classification
• Regional Climate
• Physiography
• General physiognomy of
vegetation
• Drainage boundaries
• Physiography
• Watersheds
• Local climate
• Basin morphometry
Analysis
Goal:
Identify riverine conservation priority areas based on
representation (species and habitat richness) and
ecological condition (derived from Human Threats
Index)
Index of Species
Representation and
Ecological Condition
Rescaled the Species Richness
Index and Ecological Condition
Index using linear interpolation
to, respectively, 0 to 10 and -10
to 0 scales
Resulting layer shows range
from High quality (high
richness/good ecological
condition) to Low quality (low
richness/poor ecological
condition)
Representation of
Habitat Types
Used Aquatic Ecological System
(AES) types (ecological
“neighborhoods”)
Sensitivity analysis to explore
the interaction between the
PRAI and the number of AES
types
Appendix
Expert Reviews
• The Nature Conservancy Aquatic Ecologists
• WWF Conservation Ecology, Freshwater
Aquatics team
• Montana State University Dept. of Ecology