Aquatic Database Acquisition A report For the Southeast Aquatic Resource Partnership & South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative By John Kauffman March 28, 2012 The publication was partially funded by the South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (grant #_________) and Multistate Conservation Grant Program (grant #______), a program supported with funds from the Sport Fish Restoration Program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and jointly managed with the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. 1 Aquatic Database Acquisition Contents Summary ................................................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 3 Overview ............................................................................................................................................. 3 MARIS ................................................................................................................................................. 4 Objectives ............................................................................................................................................... 5 Methods.................................................................................................................................................. 5 Results and Discussion ............................................................................................................................. 6 Status of the SARP Aquatic Data Compilation....................................................................................... 6 SALCC Fish Collection Data Summary ................................................................................................... 9 Database Access ...................................................................................................................................... 9 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................. 9 Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................. 10 Table of Tables Table 1. Agencies contacted for fish and invertebrate data. .................................................................. 11 Table 2. Status of states databases collected by March 12, 2012. Dates are the date the files were forwarded to the MARIS coordinators for conversion. ......................................................................... 12 Table 3. Collection agencies and assessment of data types in database. .............................................. 13 Table 4. Status of metadata files. ........................................................................................................ 14 Table 5. SALCC states catchments and number with fish collections separated by ecoregion and stream size. ....................................................................................................................................................... 15 Table 6. SALCC states catchments and number with fish samples sorted by state and stream size. ....... 16 Table 7. SALCC data available for analyses by stream size. .................................................................... 18 Table 8. State contacts that have provided data or are sources of data for the SARP region. ................. 19 Table 9. Fish species documented in the SALCC state collection data. ................................................... 22 Table of Figures Figure 1. States in the Southeast Aquatic Resource Partnership. ........................................................... 26 2 Aquatic Database Acquisition Summary This report documents the status of the compilation of fish and aquatic macroinvertebrate databases into the Multistate Aquatic Resource Information System (MARIS) to help assess ecological responses to flow alteration in the SARP region. As of March 2012, all of SARP states contributed fish community data other than Texas and Kentucky. These data will be available from MARIS by the end of 2012. In the meantime, the data are available from SARP. Marcoinvertebrate data was also collected from most states and will be added to the MARIS database in the future. Introduction One of the priorities identified in the Southern Instream Flow Research Agenda was the need for a large aquatic database that can be used to analyze the impacts of altered flow alteration on the ecological health of southern rivers. Historic analyses are usually limited in geographic scope thereby preventing large scale analyses and applicability outside the local area. This project is intended to develop a regional aquatic database that would be widely available for analyses and advancing instream flow science. Overview Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) form a national network of partnerships working collaboratively across jurisdictions and political boundaries to address landscape-style changes and impacts to America's land, water, wildlife and cultural resources by leveraging and sharing science capacity. The South Atlantic LCC is partnering with the Southeast Aquatic Resource Partnership (SARP) to ensure that the rich aquatic resources of their region are protected from impacts of future population growth and climate change. SARP has identified flow alteration as a priority threat and is implementing the Southern Instream Flow Research Agenda for the SALCC to advance regional instream flow science (http://southeastaquatics.net/programs/sifn). SARP is under contract to the SALCC to provide instream flow resources to support scientifically credible instream flow standards and management practices and to direct future instream flow research efforts by the SALCC and its partners. The Southern Instream Flow Research Agenda identifies basic information necessary to develop science- based instream flow resources. It follows the framework laid out in the Ecological Limits of Hydrologic Alteration (ELOHA; http://conserveonline.org/workspaces/eloha) to relate ecological responses to flow alteration. SARP has guided work of many partners over the past two years to implement the Research Agenda in the SALCC region. Biologists, hydrologists, researchers, managers, and others have contributed in many ways to develop the basic water resource information. These resources include: 3 A regional river classification framework that includes hydrologic classes; A regional assessment of the risk of flow alteration from water consumption, impervious surfaces, and dams; A compilation of fish and aquatic macroinvertebrate databases to help assess ecological responses to flow alteration; Hydrologic models to estimate the degree and type of flow alteration in a given stream or river; An initial set of hypothetical flow-ecology relationships based on regional study results; and Priority aquatic conservation areas to be addressed in future research and protection effort This information provides an integrated body of scientific information to support recommendations for instream flow protection, as well as for other water resource issues in the region. MARIS Compilation of a regional database was conceived as a “Data Sprint” where fish community and other aquatic databases from the Southeast Aquatic Resource Partnership (SARP) states would be made accessible and updated routinely on a publicly accessible portal. All Southern states have databases for fish and macroinvertebrates that are collected for a variety of water resource programs. The development of the Multistate Aquatic Resource Information System (MARIS) facilitated the compilation of these various data sources with a standardized data template and existing portal that was vetted by the National Fish Habitat Action Plan. MARIS is a platform hosted by the US Geological Survey to share existing state fisheries data across the US. The data are owned by the states, uploaded to a programmer and transformed into a common format that is geo-referenced for use with other programs such as water quality data, land use, ecoregions, etc. Data that can be incorporated into the database includes geo-referencing data, event information such as sampling objectives (i.e. targeted, general), collection gear, total catch and weight by species, fish size and age tables, and water quality characteristics. Complete details on MARIS are available at http://www.marisdata.org/. 4 Objectives The objectives of this project were to acquire aquatic data from the SARP states (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MO, MS, NC, OK, SC, TN, TX, VA, AND WV) and facilitate entry and updates of those data into MARIS. The results of this report will focus on the states in the South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (VA, NC. SC, GA, FL, and, AL). Methods Within a state several agencies often collect fish and invertebrate data with the two most common being the wildlife resource and the water quality agencies. Appropriate agencies were contacted in each state and questioned as to the availability of data from their and other agencies aquatic data collection efforts (Table 1). During those contacts the MARIS database was introduced and the potential benefits for each state described. Each contact was queried as to the status of their database (i.e. existing, centralized etc.) and the willingness to