Registration is required prior to the event. Please register here for this seminar. More information can be found at https://huw.wayne.edu/events-water.

March 10, 2022

Monitoring the Great Lakes ecosystem "at scale" with marine autonomous vehicles
Peter Esselman, Research Fisheries
Biologist, Great Lakes Science Center, United State Geological Survey

The US Geological Survey is heavily invested in monitoring and assessment of theGreat Lakes ecosystem to support partner needs for timely and accurateinformation about fisheries, species, and habitats. For more than 50 years, GreatLakes research has been accomplished using crewed research vessels, but the scaleof the Great Lakes and the demand for increased accuracy and precision haveforced USGS to adopt a suite of emerging technologies to complement their largevessel program. The newly developed capabilities share one thing in common: theyall involve sensors deployed from high-persistence autonomous vehicles targetingdifferent habitats and organisms of high management concern. This seminar willpresent applications of autonomous vehicles, eDNA, machine learning, and othertechniques to pelagic prey fish assessment, benthic invasive species detection, andbenthic habitat mapping. Progress to date points to a promising future wherespatially extensive, high resolution underwater remote sensing solutions transformthe way that USGS's partners conceive of and manage these vast inland seas.