HABITAT SUITABILITY ASSESSED BY A MODEL OF THE GROWTH OF SALMON (SALMO SALAR) PARR

• Main Authors: P. J. Bacon, W. S. C. Gurney, R. Gani, A. F. Youngson, W. Jones
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Atlantic salmon; Salmo salar
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.561.7912; http://www.bishops.k12.nf.ca/wells/presentations/salmon/bacon.pdf

A model for compensatory growth of trout was adapted to model body growth of Atlantic salmon by including a behavioural response to temperatures between 0oC and 6oC. Growth responses at higher temperatures (to 22.5oC) were incorporated from a published salmon model. The new, hybrid, model was parameterised to represent growth in ideal conditions, with data from other sites and experiments. Using a detailed temperature record from the Girnock Burn, Scotland, the new model was tested against 18 years of independent data on four age-groups of salmon parr and performed better than the salmon model from which it was derived. A site-quality parameter was introduced to explain the difference between ideal growth given the temperature record and the observed, lower, growth rates. The site quality parameter varied between years in a manner that was robust to uncertainties in the model’s parameters. The potential of the model for managing salmonid populations and habitats is discussed, including the need to model the smo ting process and density-