Fish Community and Associated Habitat Data From the Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network: 2001-2023 - Data Package

This monitoring dataset consists of fish community data for Buffalo National River, Ozark National Scenic Riverways and multiple prairie stream park units throughout the Midwest. The dataset includes fish species counts, site conditions, water quality and habitat measures, and stream discharge data for fish communities in Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network Parks. The dataset includes approximately 115,000 individual observations covering over 130 fish species observed at 11 NPS park units taken between 2001 and 2023. The overall goals of Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network fish community program are to monitor temporal changes in fish communities and relations between the fish communities and environmental factors. This monitoring information can be used by park managers to evaluate the effects of past and future activities and management decisions (either by park managers or others) on fish communities. The specific objectives for fish community monitoring are (1) to determine the status and trends in river, springs and small-stream fish communities by quantifying metrics (e.g. species richness, percent tolerant individuals, percent invertivores, and percent omnivores) that can be used to calculate multi-metric indices and (2) to estimate the spatial and temporal variability of fish community metric values and indices among collection sites, and relations between metrics and indices with various environmental variables (e.g. stream size, riparian characteristics, substrate characteristics, water quality, discharge, and land use).