Brook trout is a popular sportfish and an indicator of coldwater habitats in the eastern USA, but their populations have declined in the native range and climate change poses an additional threat…

Brook trout is a popular sportfish and an indicator of coldwater habitats in the eastern USA, but their populations have declined in the native range and climate change poses an additional threat for their persistence. Conservation and restoration action is underway, which necessitates resource inventory and management decisions about where to prioritize and invest effort at multiple jurisdictional levels. Based on our recently completed project in the southeastern USA, we propose a multistate conservation grant project to develop databases of brook trout count surveys and stream temperature measurements, model and rank hydrologic unit code (HUC) watersheds for trout habitat suitability in a warming climate (hierarchically HUC 8, 10, 12 watersheds), and visualize this spatial information and make IT available for trout managers in the 16 states encompassing the native range in the eastern USA (from georgia to maine). The spatial products rank brook trout habitats at multiple scales, so that the product can be used by various stakeholders such as multistate consortiums needing to identify priority for conservation (e.g., eastern brook, brook trout joint venture), state wildlife agencies managing watersheds, and local river organizations interested in identifying locations for habitat restoration and connectivity projects. By aggregating information and making IT available and updateable, this multistate project will result in more coordinated effort to conserve this iconic native salmonid range-wide and consequently use limited resources efficiently. A subrecipient of this grant is the university of texas at austin, who will support statistical model development.