Independent Multidisciplinary Science Team

A Landscape Approach to Salmonid Recovery

IMST believes a large-scale or "landscape" perspective should be used in managing salmonid habitat at both individual sites and across the landscape of Oregon. When concepts of landscape ecology are applied to land management decisions throughout watersheds, the focus shifts from individual stream reaches or habitat components to biological and physical patterns and processes. In our technical reports, IMST assesses how land use practices have altered these patterns and processes, so that the landscape's ability to support healthy salmonid populations is reduced. Then, we discuss how impacts on aquatic systems can be minimized and how these systems might be rehabilitated.

Thus far, IMST has approached its independent technical reports from a landscape scale. We have subdivided IMST's evaluation of science relevant to the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds to focus on major types of land use and broad geographic areas:

The subdivisions correspond to both the different policy frameworks within which these lands are managed and ecological differences among regions. Although the policies differ, these land uses interface and intermingle, and the aquatic environments on which the fish depend traverse and link them all. We emphasize that the boundaries we make between these areas in our reports are entirely artificial.