Data from: Quantifying habitat use of migratory fish across riverscapes using space-time isotope models

1.Migratory animals pose difficult challenges to conservation and
management because identifying critical habitats used throughout their
lives is rarely possible. Endogenous tracers (e.g., isotope ratios)
recorded in sequentially growing biogenic tissues, however, represent a
potential source of unique insights at the more elusive temporal and
spatial scales central to understanding the ecology of mobile species. To
this end, a general probabilistic framework has emerged that
quantitatively compares predictive models of isotopic variation across
landscapes (called isoscapes) to the isotopic composition recorded in a
biological tissue to determine the provenance and movements of animals
throughout their lives. 2.Although this spatially continuous approach to
isotope‐based geographic assignment is becoming more common across taxa
and ecosystems, adopting this framework to take advantage of serial
isotope records stored within sequentially growing biogenic tissues (e.g.,
teeth or otoliths) is less common. 3.Here, we construct a novel space‐time
isotope model of provenance (STIMP) that determines the habitat use
through time of migratory fish across river basins. To do so, this model
integrates: strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) ratios across a riverscape, the
serial records of 87Sr/86Sr within otoliths, habitat geomorphology, and
the directional movement patterns of fish through river networks. 4.To
illustrate an application of the model, we applied it to a published
dataset from Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) harvested in 2011
during a coastal fishery in Bristol Bay, Alaska, U.S.A. Using this model,
we show how individuals exploit an array of habitat types to achieve their
juvenile growth prior to ocean migration, and that the intensity of
habitat use among habitat types across the basin shifts spatially over the
course of freshwater residence (e.g., from headwaters to migration
corridors). The STIMP presented here integrates diverse information
sources to reveal the cryptic juvenile movement patterns of a highly
migratory species, providing new insights critical to their conservation.
This general framework is applicable to any migratory taxa that use
isotopically heterogeneous landscapes during their lives and record such
variation in sequentially growing biogenic tissues.