Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

National Fish Habitat Partnership (NFHP) 2015 Cumulative Habitat Condition Indices with Limiting and Severe Disturbances for the Conterminous United States linked to NHDPlusV1 v2.0

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

This CSV file contains cumulative fish habitat condition index (HCI) scores generated for river reaches of the conterminous United States as well as indices generated specifically for four spatial units including local and network catchments and 90 m local and network buffers of river reaches. Note that the cumulative HCI score is determined from limiting index scores generated for the four spatial units listed above. Detailed methods for calculating cumulative fish habitat condition index scores as well as the indices for each spatial extent can be found on the following website: http://assessment.fishhabitat.org/: The variables used to create indices in catchments vs. buffers differ due to differences in resolution of datasets. The following anthropogenic disturbance variables were used to create local and network catchment indices: Percent of urban land use, percent of impervious surface, human population density, road density, percent of pasture/hay, percent of cultivated crops, density of point source pollution sites (National Pollution Discharge Elimination, Toxic Inventory Release and National Superfund), nutrient and sediment loading to watersheds, habitat fragmentation metrics (density of dams and road crossings), density of mines and water withdrawals. The following anthropogenic disturbance variables were analyzed to create the local and network buffer indices: percent of urban land use, percent of agriculture, percent of pasture/hay and percent of impervious surface. The source datasets that were compiled and attributed to catchments were identified as being: (1) meaningful for assessing fish habitat; (2) consistent across the entire study area in the way that they were assembled; (3) representative of conditions in the past 10 years, and (4) of sufficient spatial resolution that they could be used to make valid comparisons among local catchment and buffer units. Also included in this CSV file are the most limiting and severe disturbances to stream reaches operating within each of the four spatial extents. Limiting disturbances are defined as those disturbances that result in a stream reach not being in the best available condition determined for the region. Severe disturbances are a subset of limiting disturbances that are associated with stream reaches in a given region that were scored as having high or very high risk of habitat degradation (red and orange color groups). In this data set, indices as well as limiting and severe disturbances are linked to the stream reaches, catchments and buffers created for the National Hydrography Dataset Plus Version 1 (NHDPlusV1) using the COMID identifier. It is important to recognize that these broadly-defined disturbance variables often act together with other measured or unmeasured threats to degrade habitat. Thus, while we may identify “urbanization” as a major threat to fish habitat in some regions, “urbanization” represents an umbrella term that describes many facets of urban development that could cause degradation to habitats. Fields in this dataset that begin with the "L_" prefix represent the local catchment whereas network catchments (defined by all upstream contributing catchments to the reach's outlet, including the reach's own local catchment; attributes begin with "N_" prefix. Like the catchment variables the buffer variables are labeled using a "LB_" and "NB_" prefix for local buffer and network buffer variables, respectively. More information about the processes used to create scores can be found in the processes section. Version 2.0 includes the addition of severe disturbances for each spatial scale and fixes errors documented in the change log.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/a627829a8a406bb41a7baa31f7149f85
Identifier USGS:56216cc7e4b06217fc478c48
Data Last Modified 20200827
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id db2a1469-9bad-4ff7-b82e-c415aa6c0b88
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -124.733577943,24.9510364539,-66.9540023799,49.3856201164
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 0df2c4ac03bbd95e609cdf7f3f0f208fd54d101e2d28fef7a94574188114a0ec
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -124.733577943, 24.9510364539, -124.733577943, 49.3856201164, -66.9540023799, 49.3856201164, -66.9540023799, 24.9510364539, -124.733577943, 24.9510364539}

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.