Riverine AnalysisNorthern Great Plains

Sarah OlimbNPCN Fall Meeting20 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