Even among freshwater ecosystems, rivers and streams are considered numerically rare despite providing disproportionate services to society, ultimately leading to their over-exploitation 4. Yet these same ecosystems are facing alarming rates of habitat and biodiversity loss.
Despite only 0.01% of the Earth’s surface water occurring as freshwater ecosystems, these systems harbor 7% of the world’s described species and one third of all vertebrates 2, 3. The dataset could ameliorate regional data deficits for setting environmental flow standards while providing tools for prioritizing streamflow protection or restoration.įreshwater ecosystems are facing a global biodiversity crisis 1. Validation efforts suggested hydrologic alteration models had satisfactory performance, whereas modeled ecological responses were susceptible to compounded errors. We then used a previous nationwide assessment of ecological responses to hydrologic alteration to predict fish biodiversity loss in stream reaches resulting from streamflow modification. Using empirical observations of reference conditions and anthropogenically altered streamflow at over 7000 stream gauges, we developed a predictive model of hydrologic alteration, which was extended to >2.6 million stream reaches.
Herein, we present and describe a comprehensive dataset of modeled hydrologic alteration and consequences for native fish biodiversity, both mapped at the stream-reach resolution for the conterminous U.S.
Environmental flows are critical for balancing societal water needs with that of riverine ecosystems however, data limitations often hinder the development of predictive relationships between anthropogenic modifications to streamflow regimes and ecological responses – these relationships are the basis for setting regional water policy standards for rivers.