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

The Roanoke logperch (Percina rex) is a large darter, growing to about 6 inches long. It has a bulbous snout, lateral blotches, back is scrawled, and most fins are strongly patterned. First dorsal fin has an orange band, particularly vivid in mature males. It can be found in larger streams in the upper Roanoke, Smith, Pigg, Otter, Nottoway river systems, and Goose Creek in Virginia and in the Dan, Mayo, Smith river systems and Big Beaver Island Creek in North Carolina. They prefer large sized warm clear streams and riffles, runs and pools with sand, gravel or boulder.

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 0.044 and 0.138 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.