U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey Mapping River Habitat at Different Flows in...

U.S. Department of the InteriorU.S. Geological Survey

Mapping River Habitat at Different Flows in the Big Bend Reach of the Rio Grande

A Project in Support of the Experimental Introduction of the Federally Endangered Rio Grande Silvery Minnow (Hybognathus amarus) into the

Big Bend Reach of the Rio Grande

Bruce MoringSenior BiologistUSGS Texas Water Science CenterAustin, Texasjbmoring@usgs.gov512.927.3585

Daniel PearsonGeographer/GIS SpecialistUSGS Texas Water Science CenterAustin, Texasdpearson@usgs.gov512.927.3561

Background

Rio Grande silvery minnow (Hybognathus amarus)

One of seven species in the genus Hybognathus

Federally listed endangered species (1994) Historically found throughout Rio Grande Current range - Cochiti Dam and Elephant

Butte Reservoir in New Mexico ~ 5% of its former range

Experimental Reintroduction (FWS)

Rio Grande in December of 2008 Released approximately 1.4M minnows at

four sites in the Big Bend reach (2010) Contrabando Creek (BBSP), Santa Elena

Canyon (BBNP), Rio Grande Village (BBNP), Stillwell Crossing at Adam’s Ranch (Private)

USGS monitoring

Study Area

Project Overview

1) Identify flows including a seasonal (base) low flow, a within bank high-pulse flow, and an over-bank flow that are important to support various life stages of the minnow

2) Determine the area of inundation and physical characteristics of these habitats over the range of proposed flows

3) Characterize the fish assemblage by mesohabitat type at the low flow and within-bank high-pulse flows

Data Collection

Map and characterize instream habitat (mesohabitat-scale)

Detailed reach map at targeted flows using high-performance GPS receiver

Create spatially enabled database to capture geographic (map), physical habitat, fish assemble

September 2010 – 65cfs Rio Grande @ Adam’s Ranch

Deliverables – FY2012

Project geodatabase Project Webpage

development to include online database and fully developed mapping application (Google API)

USGS Scientific Investigations Report documenting project methods and results

Value of this information?

Rio Grande Silvery Minnow management Compare sites in TX and NM

High-resolution fish occurance data, tagged with high-accuracy GPS

Instream habitat availability/change over time for RGSM

Project-specific data model that can be matured and used at enterprise level

Data Considerations

Complex. Related, but unique… data formats, collection

methods, temporal aspect, hydrologic regime (flows, drought?, impoundments)

Spreadsheets? No, databases! Geographic data married to habitat data, fish

assemblage, depth/velocity

GIS gives us the platform for managing both spatial and tabular information, mobile applications and web mapping

Realities of Biology data

General lack of readily-available digital data resources

Biology data is not commonly shared between scientists, but needed

Biology data assumption – inability to compare project data 1:1 spatially or temporal Methodology differences, sampling strategy,

equipment used

Build a warehouse?

Options limited for efficiently handling data BioTDB (NAWQA-BioData), NWIS, GAP (National),

NBII, State databases

USGS Report – safe, solid archive for project data, not efficient for end user

Long-term management of digital data formats

How to handle historical data requests Data recovery?

Needed?

“Simple”, functional data model could facilitate information sharing Uses geographic extent and scale for foundation Document driven searches

Keywords, Dates, Author, Location

Flexible, intuitive, customer driven design

Metadata heavy Explain details of methodology*

Hard-coded, robust database, NWIS-esque

Questions?

Daniel K. Pearson (GIS Specialist) USGS Texas Water Science Center dpearson@usgs.gov

Texas GIS Projects Web Site:

http://tx.usgs.gov/GIS/

Texas GIS Projects Web Site:

http://tx.usgs.gov/projects/bigbend/

mappingSMhabitat.html