1. U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey Mapping River Habitat at Different Flows in the Big Bend Reach of the Rio Grande A Project in Support of the Experimental Introduction of the Federally Endangered Rio Grande Silvery Minnow (Hybognathus amarus) into the Big Bend Reach of the Rio Grande Bruce Moring Senior Biologist USGS Texas Water Science Center Austin, Texas jbmoring@usgs.gov 512.927.3585 Daniel Pearson Geographer/GIS Specialist USGS Texas Water Science Center Austin, Texas dpearson@usgs.gov 512.927.3561

2. Background  Rio Grande silvery minnow (Hybognathus amarus)  One of seven species in the genus Hybognathus  Federally listed endangered species (1994)  Historically found throughout Rio Grande  Current range - Cochiti Dam and Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico  ~ 5% of its former range

3. Experimental Reintroduction (FWS)  Rio Grande in December of 2008  Released approximately 1.4M minnows at four sites in the Big Bend reach (2010)  Contrabando Creek (BBSP), Santa Elena Canyon (BBNP), Rio Grande Village (BBNP), Stillwell Crossing at Adam’s Ranch (Private)  USGS monitoring

4. Study Area

5. Project Overview 1) Identify flows including a seasonal (base) low flow, a within bank high-pulse flow, and an over-bank flow that are important to support various life stages of the minnow 2) Determine the area of inundation and physical characteristics of these habitats over the range of proposed flows 3) Characterize the fish assemblage by mesohabitat type at the low flow and within- bank high-pulse flows

6. Data Collection  Map and characterize instream habitat (mesohabitat-scale)  Detailed reach map at targeted flows using high-performance GPS receiver  Create spatially enabled database to capture geographic (map), physical habitat, fish assemble

8. September 2010 – 65cfs Rio Grande @ Adam’s Ranch

9. Deliverables – FY2012  Project geodatabase  Project Webpage development to include online database and fully developed mapping application (Google API)  USGS Scientific Investigations Report documenting project methods and results

10. Value of this information?  Rio Grande Silvery Minnow management  Compare sites in TX and NM  High-resolution fish occurance data, tagged with high-accuracy GPS  Instream habitat availability/change over time for RGSM  Project-specific data model that can be matured and used at enterprise level

11. Data Considerations  Complex.  Related, but unique… data formats, collection methods, temporal aspect, hydrologic regime (flows, drought?, impoundments)  Spreadsheets? No, databases!  Geographic data married to habitat data, fish assemblage, depth/velocity  GIS gives us the platform for managing both spatial and tabular information, mobile applications and web mapping

12. Realities of Biology data  General lack of readily-available digital data resources  Biology data is not commonly shared between scientists, but needed  Biology data assumption – inability to compare project data 1:1 spatially or temporal  Methodology differences, sampling strategy, equipment used

13. Build a warehouse?  Options limited for efficiently handling data  BioTDB (NAWQA-BioData), NWIS, GAP (National), NBII, State databases  USGS Report – safe, solid archive for project data, not efficient for end user  Long-term management of digital data formats  How to handle historical data requests  Data recovery?

14. Needed?  “Simple”, functional data model could facilitate information sharing  Uses geographic extent and scale for foundation  Document driven searches  Keywords, Dates, Author, Location  Flexible, intuitive, customer driven design  Metadata heavy  Explain details of methodology*  Hard-coded, robust database, NWIS-esque

15. Questions?  Daniel K. Pearson (GIS Specialist)  USGS Texas Water Science Center  dpearson@usgs.gov dpearson@usgs.gov Texas GIS Projects Web Site: http://tx.usgs.gov/GIS/ Texas GIS Projects Web Site: http://tx.usgs.gov/projects/bigbend/ mappingSMhabitat.html