"Donwstream Strategies conducts Driftless Area fish habitat condition assessment"

Downstreams Strategies, an environmental consulting firm based out of Morgontown, West Virginia is conducting fish habitat condition assessments for five Midwestern fish habitat partnerships (fhps) including the Driftless Area Restoration Effort.

The consulting firm will help fhps determine top natural and anthropogenic stressors influencing fish assemblages, guilds, abundance/distribution of fish, mussel, or invertebrate species, using a CART modeling approach.

Five fish species were selected for the DARE modeling project. Target species included: brook trout, brown trout, mottled/slimy sculpin, smallmouth bass, and longnose dace. Selection of species was determined from the 2007 DARE partenship priority species list.  Fish data were collected from the Department of Natural Resources from Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.   

Predictive models were constructed using natural (ie. elevation, soils) and human influenced landscape (ie. impervious surface, dams) variables at the local and network scales for each target fish species.

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