Habitat

Lake Habitat: Acres of “Prime” Fish Habitat

Use of habitat heterogeneity in salmonid spawning habitat rehabilitation design

A shortage of salmonid spawning habitat on dammed and regulated rivers has led to the popularity of spawning habitat rehabilitation projects. Habitat heterogeneity is thought to be an important feature of aquatic ecosystems, but specific metrics for design and assessment are lacking. In August 2002, ~ 2,786 metric tons of spawning gravels and 7 large boulders were placed in a 155 meter reach on...

Determining habitat quality for species that demonstrate dynamic habitat selection

Determining habitat quality for wildlife populations requires relating a species' habitat to its survival and reproduction. Within a season, species occurrence and density can be disconnected from measures of habitat quality when resources are highly seasonal, unpredictable over time, and patchy. Here we establish an explicit link among dynamic selection of changing resources, spatio-temporal s...

Can settlement in natal-like habitat explain maladaptive habitat selection?

The study of habitat selection has long been influenced by the ideal free model, which maintains that young adults settle in habitat according to its inherent quality and the density of conspecifics within it. The model has gained support in recent years from the finding that conspecifics produce cues inadvertently that help prebreeders locate good habitat. Yet abundant evidence shows that anim...

Habitat classification modeling with incomplete data: pushing the habitat envelope.

Habitat classification models (HCMs) are invaluable tools for species conservation, land-use planning, reserve design, and metapopulation assessments, particularly at broad spatial scales. However, species occurrence data are often lacking and typically limited to presence points at broad scales. This lack of absence data precludes the use of many statistical techniques for HCMs. One option is ...