National Assessment of Stressors to Estuarine Fish Habitats in the Contiguous USA
Estuaries provide vital habitat to a wide variety of fish species, so understanding how human activities impact estuarine habitats has important implications for management and conservation of fish stocks. We used nationwide datasets on anthropogenic disturbance to perform a quantitative assessment of habitat stressors in US estuaries. Habitat stressors were characterized by four categories of indicator datasets: (1) land cover/land use, (2) alteration of river flows, (3) pollution sources, and (4) eutrophication.