Monitoring and Detection

To assess use of dredge material areas, avian ecologists from USGS WARC are conducting bird surveys across the annual life cycle.

USGS researchers are conducting ground surveys and collecting aerial imagery to understand avian use of restored habitats at Whiskey Island, Shell Island, Cheniere Ronquille, and Breton Island. They will also develop habitat maps to understand how coastal processes and episodic events influence barrier islands.

USGS scientists have developed and optimized python-specific eDNA markers to detect Burmese pythons from water samples taken from the Florida Everglades. This development may aid in the identification of possible waterways used as corridors for northward expansion of this invasive species.

Researchers will evaluate the potential of aquatic species to invade the Northeast U.S. Following the identification of appropriate target species by regional stakeholders, researchers will gather data from the NAS database and develop models to determine habitat suitability for each species.

USGS researchers will track juvenile Burmese python within Big Cypress National Preserve (BICY) and collect data on snake growth, habitat use, and causes of mortality. Known-fate models will be used to estimate survival and better understand factors that influence survival.

USGS researchers will collect data on salinity, water level, and flooding duration within Big Branch National Wildlife Refuge to improve the understanding of the hydrologic system, and how hydrology drives available red-cockaded woodpecker habitat use and availability across the landscape.

USGS will monitor hydrologic and marsh conditions at the Turtle Bayou mitigation area. This effort will help provide a long-term water level dataset for Turtle Bayou.

USGS will install and maintain up to six rod surface-elevation table (RSET) and paired accretion monitoring stations at the location of the Maurepas Swamp Alternative-2 Mitigation Project.

USGS will provide support to the Large-scale Marsh Creation – Upper Barataria Component Project by monitoring change in the area of land and water, and recovery of vegetation and elevation over time.

USGS researchers and their partners will develop a coupled hydrodynamic and water quality modeling system; calibrate and validate the models; assess and predict outcomes of a canal backfilling restoration project on key water quality attributes; and run the modeling system under a suite of scenarios reflecting changing environmental conditions.

Fifty-four biologists from nine organizations, including USGS, participated in a two-day Fish Slam event on December 13 - 14, 2023 in Southwest Florida.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is leading a Monitoring and Adaptive Management (MAM) activity with USGS collaborators to establish reference ranges and restoration targets, assess data gaps for focal nekton species and/or guilds associated with Louisiana’s estuarine and coastal habitats, implement the fixed-area sampling strategy to quantify fishes and invertebrates...