Terms of Reference

Geospatial Mapping Tools, Indicators, and Metrics for Fish Habitat in the Pacific Region

Regional Peer Review - Pacific Region

July 27, 2022
Virtual Meeting

Chairperson: Josephine Iacarella

Context

On August 28, 2019, a new Federal Fisheries Act came into force with restored protections and modernizations to help safeguard fish and fish habitat. To implement the modernized Act, the Fish and Fish Habitat Protection Program (FFHPP) has increased their capacity to work with communities, partners, and stakeholders in freshwater, coastal and marine environments to undertake activities that will improve outcomes for fish and fish habitat through conservation, protection, and restoration. FFHPP plans to improve how it reports to Canadians on both its own activities related to fish and fish habitat protection and the work of partners and stakeholders. Modern tools and approaches to track and assess the health or status of fish and fish habitat are needed to support responsive and integrated regulatory, planning, partnership and monitoring activities by FFHPP and to demonstrate improved outcomes for sustainability of fish and fish habitat.

FFHPP has requested that Science Branch review geospatial tools, identify watershed indicators and metrics, and discuss reporting features to assess and report on the status of threats to the state of fish habitat, including but not limited to those listed in the Fish and Fish Habitat Protection Policy Statement (DFO 2019). The threats listed are habitat degradation, habitat modification, aquatic invasive species, pollution, and climate change. The overexploitation of fish and provincially managed species are beyond the scope of this request.

Public facing geospatial tools that provide indicators for assessing threats (i.e. stressors) to fish habitat and watersheds in the Pacific Region will be reviewed alongside key habitat stressors of DFO-managed freshwater and anadromous species as identified by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and the threats listed above. For example, existing tools for BC and the Yukon include the Pacific Salmon Explorer, World Wildlife Fund Watershed Reports and BC’s Stewardship Baseline Objectives Tool. Advice will be provided on the suitability of these and other tools and indicators for reporting on the state of fish habitat for the Pacific Region.

The assessment and advice arising from this Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) Science Response (SR) process will be used to inform FFHPP Pacific Region activities related to the implementation of the modernized Fisheries Act, including being able to articulate how FFHPP Pacific is working to develop habitat status or health indicators. This advice will also inform planning initiatives for future reporting in part by identifying data gaps and uncertainties.

Objectives

The specific objectives of the review are to:

1. Review BC and Yukon public facing, interactive geospatial tools (or global tools that include BC and Yukon), as well as publicly-available BC provincial reports, that may be used to evaluate and summarize the state of habitat for DFO-managed freshwater and anadromous species (salmon, species at risk (SAR)) and watersheds.
2. Identify fish habitat indicators and metrics that are relevant to Pacific salmon and SAR compiled from tools reviewed in objective one, and from threats identified in COSEWIC status assessments for BC & Yukon salmon designatable units (DUs) and SAR.
3. Review the methods used to create the indicators by the tools in objective one, including spatial analyses approaches, resolutions, spatial extents, thresholds or binning rules, and summation rules for cumulative effect metrics, if applicable. Overview whether the tools have a temporal component to assessing indicators.
4. Identify which indicators and metrics from objective two may be linked to the threats listed in the Fish and Fish Habitat Protection Policy Statement (DFO, 2019): habitat degradation, habitat modification, aquatic invasive species, pollution, and climate change; and other pressures such as riparian change, aquatic vegetation change, fish passage change or loss, sedimentation, deleterious substances, and changes in the food supply, dissolved oxygen, and nutrients.
5. Determine and provide advice on the suitability of the tools in objective one, in whole or part, for describing threats to fish and fish habitat and changes over time in the Pacific Region using the indicators or metrics identified in objective two. Discuss this in the context of other known tools, indicators, and metrics, for instance from DFO (e.g., Stalberg et al. 2009) and the Pacific Northwest (e.g., Washington State of Salmon, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Water Quality Standards).
6. Identify data gaps and uncertainties.

Expected Publication

• Science Response

Expected Participation

• Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) (Ecosystems and Oceans Science, and Ecosystems Management)
• Academia (e.g. Simon Fraser University)

References

• DFO. 2019. Fish and fish habitat protection policy statement, August 2019.
• Stalberg, H.C., Lauzier, R.B., MacIsaac, E.A., Porter, M., and Murray, C. 2009. Canada’s policy for conservation of wild pacific salmon: Stream, lake, and estuarine habitat indicators. Can. Manuscr. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 2859: xiii + 135p.