THE FISH HABITAT DECISION SUPPORT TOOL: COASTAL DATA TUTORIAL

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1 THE FISH HABITAT DECISION SUPPORT TOOL: COASTAL DATA TUTORIAL Downstream Strategies The Fish Habitat Decision Support Tool (FHDST) is an advanced online mapping tool that mimics the functions of several core GIS analysis tools with a focus on planning fish habitat restoration and conservation. The tool was developed by Downstream Strategies and West Virginia University in conjunction with the US Fish and Wildlife Service as well as numerous other partners. The tool, as well as the implicit methods, is meant to aid in the planning and execution of restoration and conservation of aquatic species and habitats. This tutorial will provide a high level review of the capabilities and functions of the Fish Habitat Decision Support Tool ( and will focus on the coastal data layers within the tool. To access the tool, navigate to the website listed in the previous sentence, and click on the map image at the top of the page. The tool will open in a new tab on your web browser. The tutorial is broken into five sections and the only requirement for completion is an internet connection and compatible browser. The Fish Habitat Decision Support Tool has been tested in Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to contact the authors of the tool via this page: 1

2 Layout and Navigation The FHDST includes several standard map navigation tools that will be familiar to anyone who has used any ESRI based web mapping application or Google Maps. 1. The toolbars in the upper left corner of the interface (the two red circles in the above illustration) are primarily navigation and layout tools. Click to view and change background layers. 2. Use to zoom in and out. Click and drag the map to pan. You can also double click or use the mouse wheel to zoom. 3. Use to zoom to the full extent of the map. 4. Click to expand the search tool and type Cape May, NJ and hit Enter. The map will zoom to that location. This tool searches for places, such as cities, towns, counties and states. 5. Use to change the background layer and pan/zoom around the map. 6. Click the to expand the tool box menu: (yours will be vertical). Use and to zoom back and forth between your previous extents. 7. Click to expand the HUC8 search tool. This tool searches only on 8-digit watersheds. Enter Holston into the search window and in just a moment, the following will appear: Click on Merrimack River to zoom to that feature. Note that the HUC8 watershed has been selected and highlighted within your map. 8. Click the tool to expand the bookmark manager window. Here, you can create spatial bookmarks to return you to an area of interest. These are saved via browser cookies, so they will be 2

3 available to you even if you close the window and return to the site at a later date. Click the add bookmark button to add a reference to this area. Name it test. 9. Lastly, assuming that the Merrimack River watershed is still highlighted in blue on your screen, click to clear that and all other graphics in the window. 10. The tool box menu functions not covered in this section (measure, map export, and query) will be covered in the next sections. 3

4 The Main Interface 1. The principal interface of the FHDST is accessible by clicking in the upper right corner of your screen. Clicking it will expand the menu as in the image above. 2. There are four main tools, each represented by a button along the top:. The reference layers section is the legend for the background and reference layers of the map and the remaining three tools Visualization, Ranking and Futuring - each have a similar layout, with four tabs along the top: For each tool, the Setup tab is where all settings of the tool are applied, the Results tab is where map outputs are stored and where the legend, etc. can be viewed, and the About and Help tab contain further documentation about the tool. 3. Let s take a closer look at the legend. When zoomed to the full extent ( ), all currently visible layers will be bracketed with green in the legend, like so: To turn off a layer, simply click on the layer and the green will go to gray: and the layer will disappear. Layers that are turned off at a particular zoom scale will be grayed out completely: 4

5 Changing your zoom level will turn certain layers off or on automatically. Using the toggle section button collapsed. will allow groups of reference layers to be opened or 5

6 The Visualization Tool The Visualization Tool is designed to offer the user the ability to generate thematic maps at a custom extent using the wide variety of available data. 1. If necessary, click to expand the main tool window and then click the icon to make the visualization tool active. 2. Each visualization must have a unique name. Call this Nar Bay Predictions. 3. There are a large number of options in the Scale and Geography of Visualization dropdown menu. Different study areas have different data available. Select Narragansett Bay Winter Flounder from the Scale and Geography of Visualization dropdown menu. 4. The Watershed Selector and Model or Data Category dropdowns should be greyed out, since there are no options available under these headings for this dataset. 5. From the final dropdown menu, select Current Predicted YOY Density and click Visualize. 6. The view will shift to the results tab. As in the regular legend, clicking on the layer name will turn it off and on, and clicking on will expand or contract the legend for a layer. 7. You can adjust the layer opacity with this slider to view background layers, or other data layers already produced. 8. You can download the GIS file (and a.csv file) of the dataset by clicking. 9. Let s create a second visualization to compare. Return to the setup tab. Change the name of your visualization to Nar Bay Hard Shore and from the bottom dropdown menu, select Length of Hardened Shoreline Within Hexagon and click visualize. 10. Once the visualization is created, you will be able to compare them in the results tab. Toggle the top layer (Nar Bay Hard Shore) off and on. See if you can locate an area (or areas) that have a high YOY winter flounder density as well as moderate, moderately high or high lengths of hardened shoreline. 11. From the left hand side of your screen, click on the Map Export Tool, which is this icon:. This will call up an additional toolbox, which you can use to create a map document. Select some options in the form; give the map a title and click Export. 6

7 12. After a moment, a new button will appear in that same window, which will link you to the map output: 13. Next, we will run through an example of visualizing data from the TNC diadromous fish prioritization. First, turn off the visualization layers you created by clicking the title bar in the results tab. 14. Next open the setup tab of the Visualization Tool. Type Mid Atl Top Tier HUC From Scale and Geography of Visualization select TNC Middle Atlantic Study Area. 16. Under Data of Interest, select Top Tier HUC12, the click the Visualize button. The resulting layer shows HUC12s for the Middle Atlantic region, and whether or not they were considered in the top tier of priorities for all diadromous species. 7

8 17. Next, perform another visualization for the same area. Name this layer Mid Atl Blueback Priority and select Blueback Conservation Potential Prioritization under data of interest and click Visualize. This shows the TNC derived Conservation Potential Prioritization for blueback herring, with Tier 1 being the highest priorities. 8

9 The Ranking Tool The visualization tool allows users to view multiple datasets, and a user could find areas where two variables intersect spatially using layer opacity or by turning layers off and on. This will become more and more difficult as the number of variables increases or as the conceptual relationship between the variables (i.e., X is more important than Y, but neither are as important as Z) becomes more refined. The Ranking Tool provides the user the capability to intersect and weight datasets based on user preference or criteria and view where those datasets overlap spatially. 1. If you haven t already, turn off the layers we created with the Visualization tool by clicking on their names. Activate the Ranking tool by clicking. 2. First, let s create a ranking that identifies the areas from the previous exercise. Name the ranking Urban Flounder Select Narragansett Bay Winter Flounder from the Scale and Geography of Visualization dropdown menu. 3. We ll be ranking with two data of interest, but we ll add them on at a time. From the Data of Interest menu choose Current Predicted YOY Density and click. This will add a new interface element to your display that will allow you to interact specifically with that variable: Make no changes at this time. 4. Next, select Length of Hardened Shoreline Within Hexagon from the Data of Interest dropdown and click. 5. For this first example, we will not make any changes. Click and wait for the result. 6. Because we made no changes, the tool treats each variable equally that is, no variable is more important than any other and assumes that we want values to be ranked from the highest values to lowest. So, looking at the result map, areas classified as High Rank are those catchments where the predicted density of YOY winter flounder is high and hardened shoreline lengths within the hexagon are also high. 9

10 7. Click back over to the setup tab and rename the ranking to Rural Flounder. Scroll down and find the adjustment box for the hardened shoreline variable and click inverse. This will change our ranking output. Click and wait for the result. 8. Because we inversed the way that hardened shoreline is considered, high ranks are now applied those areas that have a high YOY flounder density and low hardened shoreline lengths. The inverse button should be used anytime smaller number values for a variable should be considered as higher ranking than larger number values. 9. Turn the top layer Rural Flounder off and on and compare the areas with the Urban Flounder ranking layer below. You can see that the highest ranked areas are different hexagons, but that some of the middle and low ranks overlap between layers. This occurs because those hexagons may be match one criteria in the ranking tool setup very well, but may not match both highly. In this scenario, these are areas where YOY flounder densities are high, and are selected as moderate ranks despite not matching the hardened variable criteria as well. 10. For the next example, let s use the ranking tool to find HUC12s that match certain criteria pertaining to diadromous fish. 11. Remove or turn off any layers in the ranking or visualization results tab. Then open the setup tab of the ranking tool. 12. For the first example, let s find areas in the New Jersey where blueback herring numbers are high and watershed agriculture values are also high. These may be areas where agricultural restoration to benefit blueback herring could be viable. 13. To start, give the rank a name Mid Atl Blueback AG 14. Under scale and geography of ranking, select TNC Middle Atlantic Study Area. A pop-up window will appear that describes that the TNC prioritizations cannot be replicated using the ranking tool because they were developed using a different methodology. You can close this window and continue. 15. Under Data of Interest, select Percent Reaches with Over 50% Watershed Agriculture, then click Add Variable. Change the weight of this variable to 75, which indicates this factor is less important to this scenario than the other factor. 16. Next, select Blueback Herring Integrated Run Count Metric and click Add Variable. Move the weight slider for this variable to 100. The interface should look similar to this: 10

11 17. Click Rank. When the results are produced the map will zoom to the extent of the entire layer. Zoom to New Jersey to focus on the results there. Use the identify tool select the highly ranked HUC12 to the southwest of Philadelphia and north of Delaware Bay. The identify tool will query all visible layers on the map. Use the arrows on the title bar of the pop-up window to view the data from each of those visible layers. When the results from the ranking run are opened, you can see the raw values for each of the datasets used to create the ranking layer. In this case, the Blueback Herring Presence/Run Count Metric is 2, and the Percent of Reaches in the HUC12 with over 50% agriculture is Lastly, a rank will be shown. This is the numerical rank of how well this watershed fits the criteria selected, compared to all other watersheds in the selected ranking run. In this instance this watershed is number 11 of 76. While there are more than 76 watersheds in this ranking run, only 76 distinct ranking scores were produced, indicating several watersheds were tied. Ultimately, when focusing on New Jersey, the selected watershed is one of the best potential areas that provide opportunity for agricultural restoration for blueback herring. 11

12 18. Let s perform a more complex ranking. Say for instance you are interested in removing barriers to benefit blueback herring, but are most interested in performing this work within watersheds that are relatively unimpacted by impervious surfaces. To accomplish this, we want to find areas with relatively high blueback herring populations, high amounts of dam storage, and low amounts of imperviousness. Craft a ranking scenario wherein you include the blueback herring run count metric, weight = 75, inverted = false; percent reaches with over 8% watershed impervious, weight = 100, inverted = true; and percent flowlines with over 30% dam storage, weight = 100, inverted = false. 19. Your output should look like the following. This scenario shows many high priority opportunities for barrier removals in the Delaware and Hudson River regions. Other more scattered high priority areas exist in the Susquehanna and James watersheds. These are the HUC12 watersheds that match the ranking criteria from a regional perspective, and local opportunities may exist within watersheds other than the highest ranking ones from this scenario. 12

13 The Futuring Tool The Futuring Tool is not available for any of the coastal-based data layers. The futuring tool requires a specific analytical methodology that was not utilized for any of the current coastal/diadromous/estuarine assessments. For specific inland assessments that followed the required analytical methodology, this tool allows a user to make changes to values within up to 5 catchments and then use those values to determine the magnitude of change (if any) to the output of the model in question for those catchments and all catchments downstream. In our example, we will reduce the percentage of agriculture in a catchment, and view how that change may affect the likelihood of brook trout occurrence locally and downstream. This tutorial walks the user through the futuring tool using the Chesapeake Bay Brook Trout model. Within this region, the modeling process found agriculture, mining, and impervious surfaces to be statistically significant stressors to brook trout. The catchment selected here for futuring was identified in a ranking scenario used to find areas within the North Branch of the Potomac HUC8 that were stressed by agriculture, but NOT stressed by mining impacts. 1. Click on to open the Futuring Tool. 2. Name your futuring scenario ag changes. 3. From the Model of Interest dropdown menu, choose CBA Brook Trout. The map will zoom to the extent of the model chosen, the Chesapeake Bay watershed for this model. 4. Use the previous extent button in the toolbar on the left side of the screen to zoom back to last extent. 5. Use the search bar to search for the following location: Click on to activate the catchment selection tool. Select the catchment that the lat-long point falls within. 7. From the Model Data of Interest dropdown, select catchment percent agriculture and click. 8. Similar to the ranking tool, we now have an element in our display which can be used to manipulate that value for that catchment: 13

14 By default, the value slider is set to the current value of that attribute for that catchment which, in this case, is 51% agriculture. 9. Let s model the assumption that installing effective mitigation strategies such as well-maintained riparian buffers will dramatically reduce the impact of agriculture. Move the slider bar from 51 to 10 and click. 10. Once the futuring scenario is complete, the display will automatically switch to the result tab and zoom to the full extent of the scenario. All catchments downstream from that which you manipulated will be outlined in red and colored by the total modeled change to the underlying model (likelihood of occurrence of brook trout, in this case). Once again you can use the left facing arrow to return to the previous extent. As you can see, reducing agriculture in this catchment has a fairly extensive local effect. You can see the exact values with the tool. 11. To finish up, we re going to use the measure tool to approximately calculate how many miles of stream may be effected by this change. First, click the button in the main toolbar menu, find NHD Flowlines in the layer list (it is under the Watershed sub-heading) and turn on that layer. 14

15 12. Assuming that you still have your futuring result turned on, you probably won t see anything. Go back to the futuring tab and use the layer opacity slider to make this layer see-through; turn it down to 30%. 13. If you haven t already, zoom in to the affected area from the futuring scenario (the dark blue catchments, which will now appear gray. You should also see the stream lines. From the menu select the measure tool:. We will be measuring linear distances, so click on the middle option in the window that pops up. You can also measure an area or get the X/Y coordinate for a point. 14. Start at one end of the stream lines and trace along the line, clicking at intervals. When you reach the end, double click to end. The distance value will appear in the measure tool window. Depending on how closely you followed the line, your final value may differ from the one below. 15