Chinook salmon Snake River fall run ESU critical habitat for use in ESA/FIFRA consultations

National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) - NHDFlowline feature class

Data creation process 2017.

FCH_CKSRF_2017.shp

Data were developed as part of an effort to interpret and depict several salmonid critical habitat designations completed in the 1990s that relied on text-based descriptions but lacked GIS data. Habitat areas for Snake River fall Chinook were identified based on the following:

1) The regulatory definition of ESA critical habitat for this species found at 50 CFR 226.205(c) and the supporting final rule (58 FR 68543, December 28, 1993);

2) The USGS high resolution National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) - downloaded 2015;

3) NMFS recovery planning documents for the Snake River basin;

4) The professional judgment of biologists from the NMFS West Coast Region (Interior Columbia Basin Office and Protected Resources Division), Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Nez Perce Tribe.

We used 2017 StreamNet fish distribution data and the professional judgement of local biologists to map stream reaches presently or historically accessible to Snake River fall Chinook. Where fall Chinook have expanded their range since 1993 when critical habitat was designated, we generally assume that this expansion expresses the species' historic range. However, because the critical habitat designation is limited to the specfic 4th field HUC subbasins identified in 58 FR 68543, even if fall Chinook salmon expand their range in the future to areas upstream from those subbasins - indicating that those upstream reaches may have been "historically accessible" - those additional reaches would not be considered part of designated critical habitat.

The line work comprising this dataset was extracted from the 2015 National Hydrography Dataset, a comprehensive set of digital spatial data that encodes information about naturally occurring and constructed bodies of water, paths through which water flows, and related entities (nhd.usgs.gov). The original arcs were split at endpoints identified by NMFS and those arcs not designated as critical habitat were deleted, leaving in this dataset, only those arcs that are considered critical habitat.

FCH_CKSRF_2017.shp (GCS_North_American_1983 wkid 4269) geographic transformation not necessary, saved as CKSRF_ch.shp (GCS_North_American_1983 wkid 4269).

Geometry was not edited, attributes were not edited, metadata was edited.

The 2019 version CKSRF_ch.shp (GCS_North_American_1983 wkid 4269) was converted into the standardized feature class SalmonChinook_SnakeRiverfallrunESU_19931228 (GCS_WGS_84 wkid 4326) using the National Critical Habitat Geodatabase processing protocol.

During standardization, geometry was not edited. Attributes were edited. Metadata was edited and populated using the final rule and metadata from the source FCH_CKSRF_2017.shp (GCS_North_American_1983 wkid 4269).

Migrated field: "GNIS_Name" into "UNIT"

Dropped field: FID

As described above, this species’ HUC-based critical habitat dataset was modified from the line-based species “agency-official” NMFS critical habitat data. This HUC-based critical habitat file represents the HUC-12 watersheds (USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/watershed-boundary-dataset) that intersect with the “agency-official” critical habitat line-based data. The data were reviewed and revised to add any additional HUC-12 watersheds that were determined to have hydrologic connectivity to the critical habitat.