The Cape Fear shiner Potential Habitat dataset is a polygon layer depicting high, moderate and low potential habitat locations for Cape Fear shiner in NC counties.

Cape Fear shiner (Notropis mekistocholas) is endemic to the upper Cape Fear River Basin in the Central Piedmont of North Carolina. It is known from tributaries and mainstreams of the Deep, Haw, Rocky, and upper Cape Fear rivers in Chatham, Harnett, Lee, Moore and Randolph counties. The Cape Fear shiner is generally associated with gravel, cobble, and boulder substrates, and has been observed in slow pools, riffles, and slow runs, often with water willow. These areas occasionally support water willow , which may be used as cover or protection from predators (e.g. flathead catfish, bass and crappie). The Cape Fear shiner can be found swimming in schools of other minnow species but is never the most abundant species. During the spawning season, May through July, adult shiners move to slower flowing pools to lay eggs on the rocky substrate. Juveniles are often found in slack water, among large rock outcrops of the midstream, and in flooded side channels and pools. Cape Fear shiners are sexually mature after their first year, and are known to live up to nine years in captivity. Segmentation or separation of sub-populations by dams and loss of river habitat to impoundments are major concerns. Deteriorating water quality at some previously occupied sites make those sites unsuitable for shiners today. Other potential threats to the species and its habitat could come from such activities as changes in streamflow, runoff from agriculture and communities, road construction, impoundments, wastewater discharge, and other development projects in the watershed. The shiner is also threatened by numerous predators, such as crappie, bass, and the invasive flathead catfish.

The three levels are: Low, Moderate, and High Probability of Potential Habitat (based on similarity of environmental conditions to those found at known occurrence locations). The category thresholds were set based on the distribution of predicted values for known habitat. The High-Moderate threshold is set at the level where 90% of the observed potential habitat (species presence and reviewer judgments) falls within the High category (Presence Percent Correctly Classified). The Moderate-Low threshold were set at the level where 8% of the observed potential habitat (species presence and reviewer judgments) falls within the Moderate category and 2% within the Low category. The final thresholds for this species are 0.227 and 0.475 for the Low-Moderate and Moderate-High thresholds, respectively. Lower thresholds result in more of the range labelled as High probability of habitat and greater misclassification of known non-habitat locations. Higher thresholds result in more of the range labelled as Low probability of habitat and greater misclassification of known habitat locations.

Given the larger spatial unit of ecological models and ecological characteristics of aquatic species, the landscape scale environmental attributes of potential habitat varied greatly among sites and could closely resembled non-habitat sites. It is important to remember that potential habitat (and non-habitat) can occur at any classification level within a catchment and must be verified by a qualified biologist.

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Datasets developed under Project ATLAS do not replace any NRTR work for future projects and may not be used as a replacement for site visits / field surveys by qualified professionals and hence should be used only as a supporting platform for decision making. Use of this dataset for project scoping or screening is merely pre-decisional.