Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Texas
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Prairie streams are lifelines for human society through provisioning of economic, recreational, and municipal services. However, environmental conditions around prairie streams are substantially altered. Aquatic organisms including fish, crayfish, and mussels may be sensitive to environmental change including landcover conversion, road and dam construction, and climate change. However, there is limited knowledge across the Great Plains regarding thresholds in environmental change which dictate where and when organisms can successfully survive. Thus, managers lack data needed to guide decision-making regarding where to implement actions that may deal with human-induced shifts in the presence and composition of aquatic organisms. A region-wide perspective will allow natural resource management agencies to learn from and anticipate change based on current spatial variation in, for example, the rate and magnitude of agricultural conversion to urban land use across the study area. The objectives of this study were informed by the Prairie Streams and Fish Collaborative, comprised of stakeholders from state, federal, and NGO partners, which identified quantification of thresholds leading to changes in fish assemblage structure as a top priority. We plan to use our broad geographic coverage and state cooperators’ expertise to 1) aggregate and quantify the spatial and temporal landscape of environmental gradients, including climate and land use variables to characterize patterns of aquatic assemblage diversity, 2) identify threshold responses in aquatic assemblage structure to environmental gradients, and 3) create data products and tools to support management actions that resist reaching thresholds, direct community trajectories, or accept changes of aquatic assemblages. Because not all prairie stream organisms will be able to track their ideal environmental conditions, on the ground management actions will be needed to promote persistence of some species within a changing climate. This project will inform the process of identifying when and where such actions may be best implemented.