Integrating water temperature in a general model of salmon habitat

This project will help improve a method for modelling Atlantic salmon habitat, more specifically for parr nurseries. Suggested improvements involve adding an essential variable for characterizing these habitats: instream water temperature. Habitat preferences are usually modeled with locally defined curves based on sampling or on the advice of a limited number of experts. Up to now, the developed model does not include water temperature. This project will develop groups of thermal preferences for parrs. This will be done by coding advice from as many salmon experts as possible (more than twenty) with a fuzzy logic method already implemented in the INRS-ETE model to determine habitat preferences. The resulting thermal preferences and the model will be partially validated on two Quebec rivers: Matapédia and Ste-Marguerite.
Contact: André St-Hilaire, 418-654-3113, Andre.St-Hilaire@ete.inrs.ca