Reconnecting Southeastern Rivers: Identifying Barrier Removal Projects

Full Title: Reconnecting Southeastern Rivers:  Identifying Barrier Removal Projects through the Southeast Aquatic Barrier Prioritization Tool

Webinar description: Since 2011, SARP has been working with partners to identify, prioritize, and remove barriers to aquatic organisms in the 14 Southeastern states. SARP’s Aquatic Connectivity Program has developed a comprehensive living inventory of dams and road related barriers along with detailed metrics that can be used to prioritize these barriers for removal or bypass. SARP has been working to provide this information to partners in multiple platforms including existing state-based Aquatic Connectivity Teams that in turn incorporate on the ground information and work together to implement high priority barrier removal or remediation projects. Through working with the Conservation Biology Institute, SARP’s prioritization process has been optimized and formatted into a user-friendly interactive tool for use by partners to streamline this process. The Southeast Aquatic Barrier Prioritization tool provides summaries of barrier densities within user specified areas of interest, and allows users to prioritize barriers for removal based on ecological metrics using various attribute filters. Results can be used to help identify high priority projects to implement. This tool will considerably improve the process of identifying and implementing high priority aquatic connectivity projects on the ground.

Presented by Kat Hoenke, GIS Coordinator for SARP Program