Spawning habitat for Chinook salmon in the Willamette River Basin

This data release contains rasters of modeled spawning habitat for spring Chinook salmon in the Willamette River Basin, Oregon for a range of streamflows and for various river corridors. Usable habitat area for spawning spring Chinook salmon was evaluated by integrating depth and velocity outputs from two-dimensional hydraulic models and estimates of riverbed grainsize with observed and literature-based Chinook salmon habitat preferences (White and others, 2026). Grainsize estimates include the D50 (median surficial sediment size) and D84 (84th percentile surficial sediment size), which are used to characterize the proportion of the riverbed where substrate particles are of a sufficient size for building nests (redds) and movable by spawning Chinook salmon (White and others, 2026). The resulting rasters are organized by river, wherein each river with modeled spawning habitat is included as a child item within this data release. For each river corridor, rasters of spawning habitat are included for a range of streamflows that span typical streamflows during the spring Chinook salmon spawning period of mid-August to late-October. Descriptions of model development, habitat preference criteria selection, and limitations can be found in White and others (2026) and on each child item page.

White, J.S., Bartelt, K.M., Kock, T.J., Overstreet, B., Hansen, G., and Wallick, R., 2026, Quantifying Chinook salmon habitat across flow regimes: high resolution modeling in Oregon’s Willamette River Basin: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, v. 14, https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2026.1828470.