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

Autor: Sliger R; Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, United States of America., Graham J; St. Andrew and St. Joseph Bays Estuary Program, Florida State University, Panama City, FL, United States of America.; Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership, Washington, DC, United States of America., Hoenke K; Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership, Washington, DC, United States of America., Kimball ME; Baruch Marine Field Laboratory, University of South Carolina, Georgetown, SC, United States of America., Sterling KA; USDA Forest Service, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, Naches Ranger District, Naches, WA, United States of America., Peoples BK; Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, United States of America.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2024 Feb 28; Vol. 19 (2), pp. e0298911. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Feb 28 (Print Publication: 2024).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0298911
Abstrakt: 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 different swimming modes: Yoknapatawpha Darter (Etheostoma faulkneri), an at-risk species whose current distribution is restricted to highly degraded habitat, and Bluehead Chub (Nocomis leptocephalus), an important host species for the federally endangered Carolina Heelsplitter mussel (Lasmigona decorata). We assessed potential barriers for Yoknapatawpha Darters in the Mississippi-Yocona River watershed, and Bluehead Chubs in the Stevens Creek watershed, South Carolina, USA. We integrated Ucrit into the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership (SARP) barrier assessment protocol by estimating the proportion of individuals per species swimming at least as fast as the current through the assessed structures. Integrating Ucrit estimates into the SARP protocol considerably increased barrier severity estimates and rankings only for Yoknapatawpha Darters in the Yocona River watershed. These results indicate the importance of including species-specific swimming abilities in rapid barrier assessments and the importance of species-watershed contexts in estimating where swimming speed information might be most important. Our method has broad application for those working to identify barriers more realistically to improve species-specific fish passage. This work represents a next step in improving rapid barrier assessments and could be improved by investigating how results change with different measurements of swimming abilities and structure characteristics.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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