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Niche model results predicting fundamentally suitable and unsuitable habitat for freshwater mussel concentrations in the Meramec Basin

Metadata Updated: July 20, 2024

This layer represents fundamentally suitable and unsuitable habitat for freshwater mussels in the Meramec Basin as modeled by these authors on May 17, 2017 based on spatial data ranging from 1990 to 2014. Identification of habitat characteristics associated with the presence of freshwater mussels is challenging but crucial for the conservation of this declining fauna. Most mussel species are found in multi-species assemblages suggesting that physical factors influence presence similarly across species. In lotic environments, geomorphic and hydraulic characteristics appear to be important factors for predicting mussel presence. We used maximum entropy (MaxEnt) modeling to evaluate hydrogeomorphic variables associated with mussel presence at a riverscape-scale along 530 river km of the Meramec River basin, USA. Mussel locations were obtained from an existing multi-year dataset, and hydrogeographic variables were derived using high-resolution, open-source datasets of aerial imagery and topography. The following hydrogeomorphic variables were associated with mussel presence: lateral channel stability, low-flow surface water availability, presence of gravel bars, and stream power, but presence of gravel bars appeared to be the most important variable. Identification of suitable habitat was strongly influenced by the distance to gravel bars, suggesting mussels are found near gravel bars. A subset of the data not used in model development was used to validate the final model. The validation locations fell almost exclusively and disproportionately in habitats that the model identified as suitable, suggesting that we identified common habitat requirements for multiple mussel species. These findings can inform how resource managers allocate survey, monitoring, and conservation efforts.

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.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date July 20, 2024
Metadata Updated Date July 20, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date July 20, 2024
Metadata Updated Date July 20, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/4365dc30a57b91301151b6e29204c2bb
Identifier USGS:5fc926add34e4b9faad8a223
Data Last Modified 20240509
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 b67601d8-ee12-4817-8fa5-13551e6cf0ab
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -91.3157,37.8026,-90.3311,38.5752
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 184b558519eddd9284ea752f97afc063a843aace6235040ffd3736a343c731e0
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -91.3157, 37.8026, -91.3157, 38.5752, -90.3311, 38.5752, -90.3311, 37.8026, -91.3157, 37.8026}

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