Development and Evaluation of a Data Dictionary to Standardize Salmonid Habitat Assessments in the Pacific Northwest

Abstract

ABSTRACTRestoration ecology and conservation biology have increasingly recognized the need for a common language to facilitate the combining of data sets to help identify threats, degraded habitat, and appropriate restoration response. However, to date no tool exists that can standardize language for large quantities of publicly available information relevant to the analysis and management of threatened and endangered Pacific salmonids. Here, I present a simple and transparent method for integrating assessments of degraded salmonid habitat into a database using a data dictionary. The data dictionary is then used to measure similarity between independently created assessments for subbasins within the Columbia‐Cascade region. The relationship between the number of restoration projects and the number of assessed ecological concerns is also compared. This initial investigation illustrates the data dictionary's utility in defining a set of salmonid‐specific ecological concerns, providing a means to integrate habitat assessments to encompass a wider area and measure the concordance between different assessments conducted over the same geographical area. The ability to standardize and integrate information on degraded habitat provides an important link in a logical chain connecting habitat conditions to the restoration projects intended to enhance populations of threatened and endangered salmonids.