Fish habitat mapping using acoustic and GIS technologies

A rapid and accurate the method of assessment for fish habitats is a growing need as there is increasing degradation of aquatic environments world wide, While several small Canadian companies have developed useful technology to assess fish habitats, their ability to manage and integrate data into geographic information system (GIS) is limited.The first objective of this thesis was to evaluate the methods for undertaking and assessing the acoustic classification of substrates for five freshwater systems ranging from a prairie river (Red River), to a Canadian Shield river (Winnipeg River), to a northem Canadian river (Mackenzie River), to small northem and Arctic lakes (Chitty Lake and Wormy Lake using a QTC VIEWTM and a QTC IMPACTTM (a package of hardware and software made by Quester Tangent Corporation).The Red River has few major substrate classes while the Winnipeg River has more numerous, rapidly changing, small-scale substrate pattems.The Mackenzie River, on the other hand, is a large river with lârge-scale homogeneous substrates allowing for the collection of many acoustic signals fiom one substrate type and making the correlation of acoustic signal and substrate classes easier.Ground truth was undertaken by collecting benthic samples and developing a "visual classification system" and a process for the separation of sediments based on grain-sizes and proportions.A geographical information system (GIS) was developed in which the acoustic data were used to interpolate into continuous bathymetry and subshate pattems.The second objective was to determine if a comprehensive catalogue of substrate classes could be developed, to coûelate them with the benthic samples, and to relate the bathymetry models and the substrate classes to fish movements, i.e. lake sturgeon, Acipenser fulvescenes,lake tro:ut Salvelinus namaycush and Arctic char Salvelinus alpinus, in a spatial context.To expand the understanding of substrate, the track points of lake sturgeon movements were superimposed on interpolated maps of the bathymetry and the substrate pattems at the Seven Sisters site on the Winnipeg River.The movements of lake sturgeon, lake trout and Arctic char were tracked in the three systems using a VEMCO's acoustic telemetry system.Additional selected samples of lake trout and Arctic char movement records (two fish of each species from each site) we¡e assessed to verifu the association of the fish movement and the substrate maps

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