Leveraging the National Water Model to Inform Binational Management of Invasive Carp in North America

Invasive carp pose a major threat to freshwater ecosystems in North America. FluEgg simulates the drift of invasive carp eggs and larvae in a river and is used to evaluate whether a river is suitable for invasive carp spawning, guide sampling/monitoring efforts, and identify likely spawning locations. Currently, either a hydraulic model or field measurements are needed to run FluEgg, which takes considerable time and expertise. Therefore, we propose to develop and test a Python workflow for using outputs from NOAA’s National Water Model (NWM) as hydraulic inputs for FluEgg simulations. Agencies with programs for managing invasive carp will benefit from the reduced time and expertise needed to run FluEgg simulations. Furthermore, the proposed work will serve as a use case for accessing NWM outputs programmatically. The scripts and lessons learned will be shared with the USGS CDI and external partners.