Executive Summary

Though the Dosewallips River has been identified as a priority watershed for salmon conservation there is little available aquatic habitat data, hindering effective natural resource management decision-making. We initiated the present study to correct this data gap and guide future aquatic habitat protection and restoration efforts in the watershed. The Dosewallips River corridor’s inaccessibility and natural hazards render traditional ground-based habitat surveys impractical. Moreover, the patchiness of key habitat features such as large wood (LW) jams, pools, and secondary channels warrants a continuous survey approach so that biological hotspots are not missed and natural longitudinal variability is adequately characterized along the entire river corridor. Recent advances and integration of remote sensing, GIS, and GPS technologies offer aquatic ecologists new tools to conduct broad-scale river-floodplain habitat assessments. We combined 20 cm-resolution LIDAR and digital orthophotography with ground surveys to map LW, pools, and secondary channels along 22 kilometers of the Dosewallips River. Reaches were classified by geomorphic and land use setting, and select ground surveys of low-gradient tributary and side channels (or ‘secondar