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5/22/2018  |   2:00 PM - 2:15 PM   |  REGIONAL ASSESSMENTS OF AQUATIC INTACTNESS: SENSITIVITY OF INFERENCES TO DIFFERENCES IN DATA SOURCES, SCORING, AND AGGREGATION   |  330 A

REGIONAL ASSESSMENTS OF AQUATIC INTACTNESS: SENSITIVITY OF INFERENCES TO DIFFERENCES IN DATA SOURCES, SCORING, AND AGGREGATION

Direct inventories of the physicochemical and biological condition of all waterways would ideally inform aquatic resource management; however, complete inventories are impractical due to prohibitive costs. Alternatively, regional assessments seek to infer aquatic conditions for all waterways based on the absence of anthropogenic activities. Readily available geospatial measurements of land uses and surface disturbances influencing ecological processes or services (i.e., aquatic intactness) are used. Despite rising popularity, neither the accuracy nor the comparability of regional aquatic assessments have been tested, and no standard framework for their construction has emerged. We review regional assessments of aquatic intactness conducted to date in the U.S. and use three case studies to demonstrate how differences in scope, data types and methods of scoring and aggregation can affect final assessment outcomes. For example, a comparison of three assessments done for the same region had low comparability (R2 ranged from 0.15 – 0.36), despite using similar data inputs, and all three assessment scores were poorly correlated with direct measures of biological condition. In this talk, we will discuss best practices for conducting regional assessments and suggest a path forward that should improve assessment performance and interpretability.

  • Anthropogenic
  • Conservation
  • Management

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Presenters/Authors

Scott Miller (), BLM/USU National Aquatic Monitoring Center, Department of Watershed Sciences, Utah State University, scott.miller@usu.edu;


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Christian Perry (), Department of Watershed Sciences, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA, christian.perry@usu.edu;


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Charles Hawkins (), Utah State University, chuck.hawkins@usu.edu;


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