Habitat Evaluation Interactive Suitability Tool

In collaboration with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), we developed HEIST (Habitat Evaluation Interactive Suitability Tool), an interactive web application designed to support fish habitat assessment under Canada’s Fisheries Act. Built using R Shiny, HEIST helps practitioners evaluate habitat suitability for freshwater fish species by integrating ecological knowledge with intuitive decision-support tools. The application allows users to visualize habitat suitability curves across key environmental gradients such as temperature, depth, velocity, and dissolved oxygen, while accounting for species-specific life stages and ecological processes including spawning, migration, and foraging.

Beyond visualization, HEIST enables practitioners to assess habitat quality at specific sites by entering field-measured environmental conditions to generate suitability scores, habitat classifications, and management recommendations. The tool also supports threat assessment by modeling potential impacts from urban development, agricultural runoff, climate change, and physical barriers such as dams or culverts. The application currently supports multiple conservation-priority freshwater fish species, combining ecological modeling, interactive visualization, and reproducible reporting within a unified decision-support platform.