Large river habitat complexity and productivity of Puget Sound Chinook salmon.

ABSTRACT: While numerous studies have shown that floodplain habitat complexity can be important to fish ecology, few quantify how watershed-scale complexity influences productivity. This scale mismatch complicates population conservation and recovery strategies that evaluate recovery at regional or multi-basin scales. We used outputs from a habitat status and trends monitoring program for ten of Puget Sound's large river systems to examine whether juvenile Chinook salmon productivity relates to watershed-scale habitat complexity. We derived habitat complexity metrics that quantified wood jam densities, side and braid to main channel ratios, and node densities from a remote sensing census of Puget Sound's large river systems. Principal component analysis revealed that 91% of variance in these metrics

SUBMITTER: Hall JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6211665 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature