W81EWF-24-SOI-0004: Advancing Ecohydraulic Research with National Information Collaboration on Ecohydraulics (NICE) Numerical Models for Fish

SOI DUE: 18 December 2023

FULL PROPOSAL DUE: 19 January 2024

Background

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 goal of this project is to address the challenge of developing advanced numerical modeling near infrastructure with known accuracy and precision, especially in difficult-to-quantify environments such as dam gates wells, lock chambers, tailraces, and fishways. Multidimensional models are useful for estimating hydraulic conditions that influence fish, but the need for accuracy and precision in these applications is not well understood. In fact, new metrics of hydraulic model performance that incorporate observed fish behavior outcomes are needed to improve the utility of multidimensional models in predicting ecohydraulic outcomes. 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.

Public Benefit

These studies will help ensure the preservation and protection of numerous threatened & endangered (T&E) fish species in the Mississippi River that could be impacted by a reduction in lock use. The protection of these fish species has been determined to be of national significance due to their past population decline. In addition to T&E species, other aquatic species will also benefit from providing this hydrologic connectivity and thereby help maintain natural ecosystem trophic balances and biodiversity. Anticipated increases in public ecosystem goods and services from these environmental management decisions include aesthetic and economic value for present and future generations in areas such as recreational use, sports fishing, improved water quality, and naturally functioning ecosystems.

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