AquaDePTH-Aquatic Disease and Pathogen Repository
The Aquatic Disease and Pathogen Repository (AquaDePTH) will be a public-facing national repository to support biosurveillance of aquatic animal diseases and pathogens. By collating historically published data, plus new aquatic pathogen and disease information, stakeholders will be able monitor fish kill and aquatic pathogen trends spatially and temporally in freshwater and marine environments. The USGS invites partners to engage in the development of this new repository by reaching out to the contacts listed here.
Infectious disease significantly impacts commercially and ecologically relevant aquatic animal populations in the United States. Federal, state, tribal, academic, and private entities expend considerable resources to survey for aquatic pathogens but, there is no infrastructure to facilitate sharing or tracking of aquatic pathogen surveillance data at a regional or national scale. The effort for the Aquatic Disease and Pathogen Repository (AquaDePTH) is led by three USGS centers, including the Wetland and Aquatic Research Center in Gainesville FL, the Western Fisheries Research Center in Seattle WA, and the Eastern Ecological Science Center in Kearneysville WV. With the spread of aquatic pathogens/disease and invasive species being key priorities within aquatic ecosystems, AquaDePTH will expand on the success of the USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (NAS) database, a long running, nationwide repository that provides managers and researchers tools to track the spread of aquatic invasive species with the use of helpful layers that demonstrate watersheds and aquatic connectivity. The new AquaDePTH Database will expand the NAS framework to curate spatially referenced biogeographic accounts of priority freshwater and marine animal diseases and pathogens to support national USGS biosurveillance efforts. Datasets will be provided by USGS research efforts, and from partnerships with federal, state, tribal, and academic institutions. AquaDePTH sets out to curate existing and new aquatic pathogen data within a single sharable source and to ensure interoperability with other existing pathogen databases. Stakeholder engagement will occur through workgroup participation during the design of the database, as well as webinars and presentations to the aquatic animal health community. The goal of AquaDePTH is to curate aquatic pathogen occurrence/prevalence and aquatic disease data along with user-collected information on host and environmental co-factors that may influence disease. This data will facilitate efforts to track and model aquatic diseases over space and time, particularly to better understand disease trends in the face of aquatic ecosystem stressors including climate change and habitat degradation. The new AquaDePTH Database will distribute information to stakeholders and the general public through an online portal, providing custom data queries and downloads, distribution maps, and a data dashboard for generating data summaries.
The Aquatic Disease and Pathogen Repository (AquaDePTH) will be a public-facing national repository to support biosurveillance of aquatic animal diseases and pathogens. By collating historically published data, plus new aquatic pathogen and disease information, stakeholders will be able monitor fish kill and aquatic pathogen trends spatially and temporally in freshwater and marine environments. The USGS invites partners to engage in the development of this new repository by reaching out to the contacts listed here.
Infectious disease significantly impacts commercially and ecologically relevant aquatic animal populations in the United States. Federal, state, tribal, academic, and private entities expend considerable resources to survey for aquatic pathogens but, there is no infrastructure to facilitate sharing or tracking of aquatic pathogen surveillance data at a regional or national scale. The effort for the Aquatic Disease and Pathogen Repository (AquaDePTH) is led by three USGS centers, including the Wetland and Aquatic Research Center in Gainesville FL, the Western Fisheries Research Center in Seattle WA, and the Eastern Ecological Science Center in Kearneysville WV. With the spread of aquatic pathogens/disease and invasive species being key priorities within aquatic ecosystems, AquaDePTH will expand on the success of the USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (NAS) database, a long running, nationwide repository that provides managers and researchers tools to track the spread of aquatic invasive species with the use of helpful layers that demonstrate watersheds and aquatic connectivity. The new AquaDePTH Database will expand the NAS framework to curate spatially referenced biogeographic accounts of priority freshwater and marine animal diseases and pathogens to support national USGS biosurveillance efforts. Datasets will be provided by USGS research efforts, and from partnerships with federal, state, tribal, and academic institutions. AquaDePTH sets out to curate existing and new aquatic pathogen data within a single sharable source and to ensure interoperability with other existing pathogen databases. Stakeholder engagement will occur through workgroup participation during the design of the database, as well as webinars and presentations to the aquatic animal health community. The goal of AquaDePTH is to curate aquatic pathogen occurrence/prevalence and aquatic disease data along with user-collected information on host and environmental co-factors that may influence disease. This data will facilitate efforts to track and model aquatic diseases over space and time, particularly to better understand disease trends in the face of aquatic ecosystem stressors including climate change and habitat degradation. The new AquaDePTH Database will distribute information to stakeholders and the general public through an online portal, providing custom data queries and downloads, distribution maps, and a data dashboard for generating data summaries.