Large river habitat complexity and productivity of Puget Sound Chinook salmon.

While numerous studies have shown that floodplain habitat complexity can be important to fish ecology, few quantify how watershed-scale complexity influences productivity. This scale mismatch complicates population conservation and recovery strategies that evaluate recovery at regional or multi-basin scales. We used outputs from a habitat status and trends monitoring program for ten of Puget Sound's large river systems to examine whether juvenile Chinook salmon productivity relates to watershed-scale habitat complexity.