Nearshore ecology of Grand Canyon fish
The Team
This is a multi-collaborator project involving a diverse group of cooperators, collaborators, and friends. Our key collaborator on this project is Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center (GCMRC) based in Flagstaff, Arizona. GCMRC scientists and staff will be involved in every aspect of research planning, field work, logistics, analyses, presentations, and publications. Other cooperating groups will include the Florida Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Arizona Game and Fish, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service. Project Principal Investigators (PI) include private industry and academic institutions. Josh Korman with Ecometric is a project PI who is able to provide tremendous analytical capabilities as well as extensive sampling experience in Grand Canyon. Ecometric will be involved in every aspect of the project. University of Florida faculty Bill Pine, Mike Allen, and Tom Frazer from the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation and Fisheries and Aquatic Science Program, are all PIs who collectively provide a range of experience in basic ecology, food web mapping, and fish population dynamics in a wide range of arctic, sub-tropical, temperate, and desert freshwater and marine aquatic ecosystems. Dr. Karin Limburg from SUNY-ESF is an aquatic ecologist who has used innovative otolith microchemistry techniques to unlock new insights into life history characteristics of adult and juvenile anadromous and diadromous fishes in the US and Europe. During this project we will certainly involve additional partners including long-standing collaborators from University of British Columbia, NC State University, USGS-FISC, and SWCA. Students involved in this project will have the opportunity, and be expected, to actively engage and cooperate with all collaborators.
Large projects with large numbers of collaborators and cooperators such as this present special opportunity for graduate students. In a system such as Grand Canyon, the assembled partner groups represent a tremendous amount of collective knowledge about the physical and ecological forces that shape the ecosystem. This creates an excellent opportunity for the student to learn from this collective experience, while at the same time questioning long-held ideas, perceptions, and mis-conceptions that may be exist.
The Location
The Colorado River Ecosystem (CRE) is defined as the Colorado River mainstem corridor, tributary streams, and adjacent terrestrial habitats, located between from an area below Glen Canyon Dam near Lee’s Ferry (river mile – 15) and the western boundary of Grand Canyon National Park (river mile 278), a distance of approximately 293 river miles that is punctuated by frequent rapids and over 1700 feet change in elevation. Within the CRE, Grand Canyon is a deeply incised canyon (>1500-m deep in some areas). The rock strata all have different erosive characteristics that affect the river channel morphometry. Channel widths (40-120 m) and depths (4-15 m) vary, as do the shorelines that change from bedrock cliffs and alluvial sand bars to complex talus slopes. Access to the river is extremely limited and consists of vehicle access only at the upper and lower end of the CRE (river miles 0 and 226), scattered trails that descend several thousand vertical feet into the Grand Canyon, or boat-based river trips that are launched from the upper end of the CRE and travel the entire 290+miles. The remote nature and setting of the CRE creates a spectacular research site, but it also presents logistical challenges to river researchers. A considerable amount of study and logistics planning is required to accommodate research within the CRE. Fortunately for this project, expert GCMRC staff and partners including Humphrey Summit will provide logistics planning and support. Each trip will generally by supported by two multi-tube “freighter” rafts to transport all gear (including food, water, fuel, sampling equipment, etc.) and two specially designed aluminum electrofishing boats. On each trip it is likely that a base camp will be established (most often on a sand bar) near the sampling reaches for researchers to operate from for 12-15 day periods of time. These base camps offer eating, sleeping, gear storage, and sample processing facilities that all comply with NPS wilderness camping requirements. When working on the river, large daily fluctuations in discharge, cold water temperatures (10-13°C), and deep and powerful currents limit the areas of the CRE that can be sampled and create an environment in which all researchers must be alert and careful when working. Total length of sampling trips, including boat travel time to sampling reaches and travel time from field camp to the boat take out location on Lake Mead is approximately 20 days. For this project we anticipate participating in 4-5 sampling trips annually from approximately June-November.
Background
Extensive background material, extracted from the original RFP written by USGS-GCMRC staff, can be found here. Peer reviewed manuscripts of previous work with humpback chubs in Grand Canyon we have authored are available here.
Humpback chub
The humpback chub (Gila cypha), a cyprinid endemic to the Colorado River basin, was described in 1945 from a specimen captured near the mouth of Bright Angel Creek in Grand Canyon, Arizona (Miller 1946). This morphologically unique cyprinid has been characterized as the most specialized member of the genus Gila, and highly adapted to exist in turbulent canyon-bound reaches of the Colorado River basin (Minckley 1973). This species was included in the federal list of endangered species in 1967 and is protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Presently, only six populations are known, five in the upper basin of the Colorado (i.e. above Lees Ferry on the Colorado River), and one in Grand Canyon (Valdez and Ryel 1995). Our project will partially work with this population of humpback chub in Grand Canyon which is primarily concentrated in an area of the Colorado River near the mouth of the Little Colorado River.
