The Pvt. John Allen National Fish Hatchery, the Baton Rouge Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Office and the Gulf Coast Plains/Ozark Landscape Conservation
Cooperative (GCPO LCC) are partnering to develop a proactive approach in identifying problem areas and delivering aquatic habitat restoration actions, on the ground, before the problems reach an irresolvable level. This joint effort is already in the full process of data collection and evaluation to develop a spatially explicit model of aquatic habitats found on the St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge in MS. The full spectrum of biological needs for both of the alligator gar, paddlefish, and other floodplain dependent species are found in this floodplain. The existing project is already developing remote sensing capacity to characterize all aquatic habitats found in this interior floodplain in terms of the biological needs of aquatic species. In addition, data on bathymetry, water quality parameters, flood frequency and duration periods and vegetative types are being collected in order to accurately portray and verify habitat characteristics in the spatial model. Hydro acoustic and side scan imaging will be utilized in order to deliver the highest quality data available to resource managers at the present. Quantitative biological information is necessary to complete the suite of data for the model. Abundance and distribution of selected fish needs to be collected in conjunction with environmental data in order to adequately characterize the importance of various physicochemical conditions to aquatic life. This project will collect those data on St Catherine Creek NMR. This project is currently on-going.
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