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Simulating fish assemblages in riverine networks - September 2013
Citation:
Ebersole, Joe, B. Rashleigh, A. Brookes, G. Boxall, D. White, AND J. Bolte. Simulating fish assemblages in riverine networks - September 2013. Presented at American Fisheries Society Annual Meeting, Little Rock, AR, September 08 - 12, 2013.
Impact/Purpose:
Fish communities in river networks provide significant ecosystem services that will likely decline under future land use, human water demand, and climate change. We developed a model that simulates the consequences to multiple populations of one or more fish species – a metacommunity – from multiple stressors across a river network. The model is spatially-explicit and age-structured, with three components: habitat suitability; population dynamics, including species interactions; and movement across a spatial network. We apply the model to a fish assemblage in the Willamette River basin of Oregon, a region where human population and water demand are expected to grow substantially over the next 50 years. Although this model is simple, it can form the basis of fisheries assessments and may be incorporated into an integrated modeling system for watershed management and prediction.
Description:
We describe a modeling approach for simulating assemblages of fish in riverine landscapes. The approach allows a user to determine the grain and extent of river networks within which fish populations reproduce, move, and survive in response to both environmental drivers and assemblage interactions. We apply the model to a fish assemblage in the Willamette River basin of Oregon, a region where human population and water demand are expected to grow substantially over the next 50 years. By explicitly defining fish population responses to environmental factors such as streamflow and temperature, and interaction weights accounting for predation and competition, the approach provides a heuristic tool for identifying critical data gaps for projecting the effects of future landscape scenarios on fish assemblages. Initial results provide testable hypotheses regarding species distributions within the basin and projected responses to climate change, water consumption, and hydropower management.