A Remote-Video Artificial Stream System for the Ecological Research and Education Center, University of Kentucky

University Of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington KY

Investigators

Abstract

Rapidly advancing technology has made important scientific issues and questions that were previously out of reach accessible to contemporary research. The ability to visualize, measure, and test the understanding of the movements and spatial distributions of animals in real time and space is especially important at a time of rapid environmental change, with altered habitats and seasonal patterns and important consequences for organisms and ecosystems. Performing experiments that mimic natural conditions and interactions with built-in repetition can demonstrate patterns and evaluate predictions to a very high standard of scientific rigor. This new stream system will allow this level of repetition in multiple stream channels to document the behavior of stream organisms like fish, crayfish, snakes and their food very precisely. The behavior and distributions of these and other stream organisms determines whether certain populations that may be important for ecosystem function or recreational use will survive or perhaps spread beyond their present limits and displace native species. Knowing how these organisms fare when faced with natural and human-caused disturbances like floods, droughts, chemical pollutants, and sedimentation requires just this kind of facility to obtain clear answers. This work involves a close connection with students in local schools, who in some cases will be able to participate directly in these studies or can watch behavior of animals in the stream system from their classrooms. This project builds on the emergence of the Ecological Research and Education Center (EREC) field station at the University of Kentucky (see http://darwin.uky.edu/~erec/) by incorporating enhanced analytical capabilities through the construction of a new facility. The goals are to accelerate the development of research programs already associated with the station and its field research area ERF (= Ecological Research Facility) and to attract additional productive researchers and strengthen links with other universities, colleges, and K-12 schools in the region. An artificial stream system will be constructed with remote-controlled video that will be flexible enough to accommodate a diversity of questions and focal organisms and will allow control over physical conditions essential to mimicking the corresponding natural environments. The system will have enough independent streams to allow two or even three studies to run simultaneously at modest levels of replication or one study at high replication. The video tracking, controlled for position and zoom from off-site, can transmit high-resolution video from one or all 10 cameras to a single video screen for real-time day/night observation, storage, and analysis. A computer linked to the system by an underground fiber-optic cable will enable visualization of behavior in the streams in real time, store the large amount of data generated, and facilitate data analysis and sharing with collaborators, schools, and other researchers. This combination of capabilities will allow rapid advances in our understanding of the under-studied animals and ecosystems of streams, a high priority in Kentucky's stream-rich landscapes.