Salmon Blitz: Engaging Citizen Scientists in Documenting Salmon Habitat in the Copper River Watershed, Alaska, 2013-2017

An understanding of salmon habitat use at all stages of the Pacific Salmon life cycle is necessary to protect and sustain Alaska’s wild salmon populations into the future. The Anadromous Waters Catalog (AWC) in Alaska was used in this study is an important resource for spawning, rearing or migration of Anadromous Fishes. The Salmon Blitz project engaged community volunteers—including youth—in field surveys to collect data needed to nominate additional habitats to the AWC and provided more detail for habitats currently listed in the catalog. Specifically, this program targeted Chinook and coho salmon. Data was collected in the fall from 2013-2017 in the Copper River Watershed. The data are presented as three CSV files: CRWP_SB_observerMetadata.csv contains observer descriptions. CRWP_SB_juvenile_fish_data.csv contains data on the observed juvenile fish including date, location, mainstem, observer, latitude, longitude, species, count and comments. CRWP_SB_adult_fish_data.csv contains data on the observed adult fish including date, location, mainstem, observer, latitude, longitude, species, count and comments.