North Carolina Project
Hierarchical landscape models for endemic unionid mussels: building strategic habitat conservation tools for mussel recovery in the South Atlantic Conservation Cooperative
September 2010 - September 2013
Personnel
Participating Agencies
- South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
To advance strategic habitat conservation for mussels, managers need: a) better quantification of species life-requisites, including habitat suitability; b) models using landscape level attributes as predictors of suitable mussel habitat; c) mussel occupancy predictive models; and d) population biology and habitat-based estimates of the stream network needed to conserve the species. This research will deliver those tools while also expanding the science of freshwater mussel habitat suitability modeling.