Aquatic Resiliency and Connectivity

As long, continuous ecosystems, sometimes covering hundreds of miles across entire regions, rivers and streams are particularly vulnerable to habitat fragmentation. Damaged, undersized or misplaced road-crossings like bridges and culverts can create partial or complete barriers, a serious threat to aquatic organisms that need to move freely within and between streams to survive, and to some terrestrial organisms that travel riparian corridors along streams. These same road-stream crossings are vulnerable to damage from flooding, especially given the increased frequency and intensity of storm events as a result of climate change. Given the hundreds of thousands of road-stream crossings throughout the North Atlantic LCC region, the critical task of assessing, prioritizing, and upgrading these structures demands close coordination.

The Aquatic Connectivity project and the resulting North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative builds on existing partnerships between universities, non-governmental organizations, and state and federal agencies to provide a regional network and consistent approaches that help partners across the Northeast Region align individual efforts to assess the condition of road-stream crossings for aquatic connectivity and road-stream crossing resiliency to future floods and prioritize restoration.