National Fish Habitat Action Plan (NFHAP) Habitat Condition Indices [ds733]

Reversal of widespread fish habitat degradation will require effective spatial planning, which begins with spatial assessement of current habitat conditions. This dataset presents an assessment of cumulative anthropogenic disturbance to fish habitats in California under the assumption that downstream local habitat conditions will reflect conditions in the catchment upstream.

Geographic information systems data was used to attribute 15 disturbance variables to the catchments of mapped river reaches to calibrate an index of cumulative disturbance that considered effects originating from both local and upstream catchments. These features contain local and network catchment human disturbance variables representing anthropogenic alterations to landscapes in California, including land use, roads, dams, mines, and point-source pollution sites.