The Conservation Success Index: Synthesizing and Communicating Salmonid Condition and Management Needs

Prioritization of Watersheds and Restoration Projects

“…Restoration actions can be ranked at national, state, regional, provincial, watershed, subwatershed or stream-reach scales (Roni et al 2003;Williams et al 2007;Beechie et al 2008;Noss et al 2009; Figure 6.2). The ranking of areas for restoration (watersheds, reaches, or habitat types) rather than individual projects is often done before or as part of the project prioritization process.…”

“…We provide additional detail on the last approach (multi-criteria decision analysis or MCDA; Section 6.4.1.7) because it is the most widely used, can incorporate information from the other approaches, and is one of the most flexible and transparent approaches. Pros: a simple, straightforward, and transparent system that can incorporate a variety of metrics and information from other prioritization approaches; easily modified to include new data; well-documented approach used in a variety of fields Cons: scoring and weighting system used can affect project rankings prioritizing healthy watersheds for protection and degraded watersheds for restoration (Beechie et al 1996;Williams et al 2007;Noss et al 2009; Figure 6.4).…”

“…In the last 25 years numerous computer models and conservation biology software have been developed for identifying refugia for a variety of terrestrial and aquatic species (Sarkar et al 2006;Moilanen et al 2008;Lynch & Taylor 2010;Zafra-Calvo et al 2010). In contrast, simple multimetric scoring approaches (MCDA), which often utilize GIS data on land cover and habitat condition to assist with scoring, have been widely used for identifying refuge and restoration areas for fishes (Nehlsen 1997;Williams et al 2007;Noss et al 2009; see also Section 6.4.1.7).…”

“…It has been applied to a variety of watershed management problems including: prioritization of watersheds and sub-watersheds for protection and restoration (Gellis et al 2001); endangered fish species protection (Williams et al 2007;Lynch & Taylor 2010); river corridor and riparian protection and management (Harris & Olson 1997;Hermans et al 2007); forest road removal (Allison et al 2004); native plant community protection and restoration (Palik et al 2000); and selection of estuarine, nearshore, and marine areas for protection (Villa et al 2002;Johnson et al 2003;Diefenderfer et al 2009). MCDA is increasingly used to prioritize restoration actions for endangered fishes throughout a region or watershed (Roni et al 2003;Beechie et al 2008).…”

Is habitat restoration targeting relevant ecological needs for endangered species? Using Pacific Salmon as a case study

“…5 suggests the SHAPE metric is best suited to the HUC 4 to HUC 6 scale (i.e., ,;2,000 km 2 ), as this is where the dynamic range of the SHAPE score is the greatest and this scale aligns well with other conservation analyses. The HUC 5-6 is the ''local'' spatial scale used by other groups to determine limiting factors for Pacific Salmon in order to ''review and prioritize restoration activities and guide future funding decisions'' (Oregon Coast Coho Conservation Plan for the State of Oregon, March 16, 2007) and to calculate population-status metrics such as the Conservation Success Index (Williams et al 2007). Other Fig.…”