Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2023_MO_Pease

Evaluating the use of side-scan sonar with an N-mixture modeling framework for estimating Silver Carp abundance in the Upper Mississippi basin

Institute: Missouri
USGS Grant Number:
Year Established: 2023 Start Date: 2024-01-01 End Date: 2026-12-31
Total Federal Funds: $104,118 Total Non-Federal Funds: $104,118

Principal Investigators: Allison A. Pease

Project Summary: Silver Carp have invaded many waterways in the Upper Mississippi basin. Their impacts on aquatic ecosystems in this region are expected to be strong because they often occur at much higher densities than native fish species. A challenge for managers is to reliably assess the size of the Silver Carp populations. Silver Carp are difficult to capture efficiently, and sufficient sampling to estimate population size is labor-intensive. A potentially less costly method of measuring Silver Carp abundance is to use readily available side-scan sonar technology. Though there are challenges in identifying fish with this technique, it could reduce the amount of labor involved in estimating abundance. We propose to evaluate the use of side-scan sonar for Silver Carp monitoring paired with a modeling technique that accounts for situations in which the fish cannot be detected with complete certainty. We will compare the efficiency of this approach with more traditional methods.