Our final project focused on analysing the degree of risk to fish habitat in the Skeena river watershed. Four aspects that influence fish habitat were taken into account: fish habitat accessibility, human development, stream water quality and stream hydrology.
The project team discussed and explored many possible focus subjects for the GIS analysis project and decided on this specific focus.
Research for data acquisition was equally divided and according to the required next steps, the data was parsed to filter only the data needed for the project objective. The data acquisition, sometimes, was tricky due to unavailability or restricted data, and the difference in quality and/or extent of data sets. many of the data sets were also not in the required format or the process of downloading the data was quite complicated with the presence of layers of links and webpages.
Project analysis and the production of related maps was proceeded with by detailed discussions and consensus. The final report content was also equally divided where after the individual parts were completed, we reviewed eachother’s content to ensure a smooth-flowing, properly structured and a comprehensive paper. It was a collaborative process and all the suggestions brought up by team members were considered in detail and applied through consensus.
It is very valuable for all the team members to be involved and contribute suggestions to encourage varied perspectives and new ideas. One of the challenges encountered was to schedule group meets and aligning timetables. However, the hard work on the part of all the team members filled in this gap.
The Skeena river is one of the iconic rivers in British Columbia and is the second-largest, draining 54,400 km2 of the province. It supports major fish populations and hence, is critical to a vast expanse of the coastal temperate rainforest and its ecosystem. It was found via the analysis that, of the four influencing factors being considered, the lack of optimum fish habitat accessibility and deteriorating stream hydrology are the major factors putting fish habitat at a high degree of risk.
