Oral Presentation Society for Freshwater Science 2026 Annual Meeting

The Puzzle of “Broken” Streams: Linking Barrier Assessment to Fish Community Structure in Intermittent Streams of the Intermountain West (135402)

Stephanie Webster 1 , Christopher Cheek 1
  1. South Dakota State University, Brookings, SOUTH DAKOTA, United States

Stream fragmentation caused by dams and road-stream crossings is pervasive across the landscape, yet many of these structures remain unassessed in the Intermountain West. This study inventoried dams and road-stream crossings across Montana and Wyoming to evaluate their impacts on aquatic connectivity and fish communities. We utilized the North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative (NACC) Rapid Assessment protocol to assess road-stream crossing structures and we will investigate how the placement of road crossings and dams influences fish community assemblage along the longitudinal gradient in highly disturbed intermittent streams during the dry phase by sampling fish and environmental variables in wetted pools and applying trait-based multivariate community analysis.