Integrating fish swimming abilities into rapid road crossing barrier assessment: Case studies in the southeastern United States.

ABSTRACT: Many aquatic networks are fragmented by road crossing structures; remediating these barriers to allow fish passage is critical to restoring connectivity. Maximizing connectivity requires effective barrier identification and prioritization, but many barrier prioritization efforts do not consider swimming capabilities of target species. Given the many potential barriers within watersheds, inventory efforts integrating species-specific swimming speeds into rapid assessment protocols may allow for more accurate barrier removal prioritization. In this study, we demonstrate an approach for integrating fish swimming speeds into rapid barrier assessment and illustrate its utility via two case studies. We measured critical swimming speeds (Ucrit) of two stream-resident fish species with very differ

SUBMITTER: Sliger R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10901344 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature