DOI: 10.5066/p13mdzll
title: Exposure to surface water supply and use imbalance during spawning months for 214 fish taxa across the conterminous United States

description: This data release contains the output from an ecological analysis modeling the exposure of 214 fish taxa across the conterminous US (CONUS) to an index of surface water supply and use imbalances (SUI), a metric of monthly gross average water supply available after accounting for climate variation and consumptive use, during their spawning months, hereafter referred to as spawning exposure.

SUI were calculated in Miller and others (2024) by combining the monthly water balance from water supply and human consumptive uses for CONUS from water years 2010-2020 at the HUC12 scale. Water supply inputs were generated from two physically-based hydrologic models, and consumptive water use was calculated from three separate national models for agricultural irrigation, thermoelectric power generation, and public supply. Water budgets were routed through the surface water flow network (to allow for upstream consumptive uses to affect downstream water availability) and used to determine potential water limitations for human populations and fish taxa.

We overlaid water supply imbalances with the modeled ranges of 241 fish taxa, including Species of Greatest Conservation Need, recreationally important, and common native taxa. SUI were evaluated within each HUC12 and specifically mean weighted based on the probability of spawning in each month for each taxa. Our analyses indicated multiple taxa having notable proportions of their habitats exposed to high or severe water imbalances during spawning, especially the federally-listed Arkansas River shiner. This analysis can be used to identify fish taxa particularly exposed to water availability issues, specifically from surface water supply and use imbalances, during the physiologically important spawning period. However, this analysis did not consider specific taxa-level differences as to the sensitivity of different taxa to limited water supply.

This data release contains five tabular datasets in comma-separated values (.csv), covering a tabular data dictionary, input data supporting analysis, raw analysis output, and summarized versions at two spatial scales for convenience. They are:

data_dictionary.csv - A data dictionary containing entity and attribute information about variable names, descriptions, types, ranges, and unique values for easy access.
SpawningExposure_TaxaSpawningWeights.csv - Dataset used to weigh spawning months for each taxon in calculation of the spawning exposure. Derived from Frimpong and Angermeier, 2011.
SpawningExposure_SUI_HUC12.csv - CONUS level dataset of spawning exposure to SUI from 2010-2020 for each fish taxa reported for each HUC12 where they are present.
SpawningExposure_SUI_CONUS_Summary.csv - A summary of spawning exposure to SUI by fish taxa, for the entire habitat range in CONUS, the range-averaged SUI exposure and percentage of habitat in each SUI category class.
SpawningExposure_SUI_Regional_Summary.csv - Summaries of spawning exposure to SUI by fish taxa, for each Van Metre (2020) hydrologic region, the region range-average exposure and percentage of the region's habitat range in each SUI category class.