Evaluating alternative methods for constructing habitat suitability relationships for freshwater species status assessmentsperiod of performance:10 01 2025 - 09 30 2026ABSTRACT summary: this project…

Evaluating alternative methods for constructing habitat suitability relationships for freshwater species status assessmentsperiod of performance:10 01 2025 - 09 30 2026ABSTRACT summary: this project will compare approaches for estimating habitat suitability of freshwater species to inform risk-assessments. Additionally, funds will be used to support travel for the postdoctoral researcher leading the project. Ultimately, this research will improve methods used in species status assessments by helping biologists understand the reliability of expert elicitation-based approaches when the necessary data for empirically estimating habitat suitability are unavailable.activities to be performed the overarching objective is to evaluate consistency of habitat suitability relationships constructed from empirical habitat suitability modeling versus relationships constructed from expert elicitation and is divided into three parts: I) estimating habitat suitability from occurrence records II) empirically estimating habitat suitability from a formal elicitation with experts, and III) examining congruency of predicted habitat suitability between empirical versus elicitation-based approaches.deliverables and expected outcomes deliverables include a final report, associated manuscript, anonymized data release, and software code associated with analyses and a web application for visualizing results.intended beneficiary(IES) the intended beneficiaries are recovery and listing biologist with the U.S. Fish and wildlife service, although state biologists and researchers who rely on elicitation-based methods would also benefit.