National Information Collaboration on Ecohydraulics (NICE) Grant: Advancing Acoustic Tracking for Fish Passage

Disclosures of current and pending support made in this application may render an applicant ineligible for funding. Prior to award and throughout the period of performance, ERDC may continue to request updated continuing and pending support information, which will be reviewed and may result in discontinuation of funding.

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“THIS IS A 2 PHASE APPROACH. 

SOI DUE: 18 December 2023

FULL PROPOSAL DUE: 18 January 2024

There are many locks and dams, navigation channels, and increasingly beneficial sediment-use sites across the Mississippi watershed and throughout the United States. Interest is high in understanding navigation impacts on fisheries and how navigation infrastructure can be used to manage fisheries in the role of navigation. Currently, fisheries impacts are often not explicitly accounted for in lock and dam operations. For example, nearly all dams in the Mississippi Basin and southeastern United States are, by and large, not designed to accommodate fish passage for native fish. Moreover, many of these dams are now being viewed as possible components for control and management of aquatic nuisance species. Some native fishes are now protected under provisions of the Endangered Species Act further heightening interest in the possible influence of locks and dams on fish movement. A primary challenge of the proposed work is to develop strategies that allow fish movement past locks and dams while not impacting navigation operations.

The National Information Collaboration for Ecohydraulics (NICE) has been established with the mission of applying ecohydraulic principles to navigation infrastructure at multiple scales and facilitating accurate engineering forecasts of fisheries outcomes based on research and development for multiple contexts.

Program Description/Objective: (brief description of the anticipated work)

The aim of this research is to address the challenge of obtaining multidimensional high-resolution fish positions near infrastructure. Locks and dams are often hydraulically energetic making the use of current acoustic tracking difficult or impossible. These data sets are viewed as critical missing elements in understanding fish movement near infrastructure. This limits the design possibilities for implementing effective passage, mitigation, or management at locks and dams. This project will develop new techniques that allow the collection of high-resolution fish tracks near infrastructure, the implementation and evaluation of real-time tracking, and improved post-processing. Multiple species, both native and non-native, require data. Field sites will be in the Mississippi River and its tributaries with a particular focus on application to future fish passage structures in the middle Mississippi River.