Tim Havens, William and Gloria Jackson Professor, director of the Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC), and director of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC), is principal investigator of a new $631,452 grant from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) titled “Enabling the Future of Great Lakes Biological Resource Assessment.”
A collaboration among the USGS, Michigan Tech, and the Michigan Tech Research (MTRI) Institute, the overarching goal of the project is to research new and experimental biological assessment tools that improve the spatial coverage, accuracy, precision, and usefulness of USGS’s Great Lakes science program.
Three specific technological innovations will be investigated to achieve this goal: underwater and surface autonomy, underwater imaging, and machine learning. Combined, these innovations will generate new knowledge that is useful to Great Lakes national resource managers. The innovations will enable USGS to collect and process lake-wide surveys of prey fish abundances, answering discrete research questions about the fish, limnology, and ecosystems; map habitats; and develop more efficient technological solutions to address persistent sampling problems.