California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment

California Current Ecosystem Component: Habitat

Overview

Aquatic habitats support diverse biological communities and are the focus of management mandates, species conservation initiatives, and restoration efforts. Habitat quantity and quality is affected by both long-term climate processes and a variety of human activities. Yet, effective management is often hindered by a lack of understanding of habitat condition and function through time and space.

Incorporating habitat into the EBM framework is crucial to understanding the scale of habitat interconnections, as well as linkages between habitat drivers, dependent marine resources, and associated human benefits.

 

overview habitat diagram

 

freshwater habitat diagram

 

estuary habitat diagram

 

pelagic habitat diagram

 

seafloor habitat diagram

 

Scale

Biogeography frames how we scale habitat-based indicators in the California Current Ecosystem. For freshwater habitats, represented by indicators of snow water equivalent (SWE), streamflow, and stream temperature, we present data from each of six freshwater ecoregions, which are based on biogeographic units for freshwater biodiversity conservation (Abell et al. 2008). For marine habitats, we generally present indicator data from three major marine ecoregions (NCC - WA/OR/northern CA, CCC - central CA, and SCC - southern California bight) based on biogeographic classifications that reflect patterns in marine biodiversity and oceanographic processes (Spalding et al. 2007). 
 

Indicator Status and Trends

Of 132 potential ecosystem indicators, a subset were selected as high priority indicators to describe the health and status of freshwater, estuary and nearshore, pelagic, and seafloor environments using an established evaluation framework.

Indicator data are currently being compiled from state and federal databases to create long-term time series. Indicators of freshwater habitat, snowmelt and streamflow, play a large role in salmon populations and can be accessed here. Links to other data are a work in progress; please standby for updates.