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

The goal of this project is to provide guidance to aquatic resource managers and decision makers for managing this habitat and their associated aquatic communities. Our proposed research will inform management and conservation efforts performed at multiple spatial scales, ranging from the regional prioritization of critical aquatic habitats to local population dynamics of ecologically and economically valuable fish species. An important first step in managing the nation’s fish habitat is a comprehensive assessment of the current state of habitat at national, regional and local scales. Successful management of aquatic habitat will also require a capacity to forecast changes in habitat as result of future changes in climate, land-use, and other natural and anthropogenic factors. Successful conservation and management will need to determine what are the critical habitat and resource strategies to conserve in order to maintain freshwater biodiversity, freshwater fisheries and ecosystem function in the future.