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Leveraging Conservation Technology to Improve Protected Species Management Efforts and Enhancing Ecosystem Services within the Hudson River NERR

Leveraging Conservation Technology to Improve Protected Species Management Efforts and Enhancing Ecosystem Services within the Hudson River NERR

Team member holding a juvenile sturgeon

This collaborative bioacoustics research and education effort yielded one of the largest continuous recording data sets of rivers in the world, leading to important management, conservation, and education outcomes.

The Project

The Hudson River Estuary (HRE) supports a wide range of fish species, including a number of migratory and endangered species. The Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve (HRNERR), partners closely with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) Fisheries Unit to monitor these fish species to inform fisheries management. Traditional monitoring approaches for migratory and resident fish in the Hudson River Estuary have been unable to fill critical information gaps on several key fish species, impeding effective management of their populations.

To fill these information gaps, the HRNERR needs development of non-invasive techniques capable of answering questions about phenology, abundance, and spatial patterns of habitat use of priority fish species. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM; also referred to as bioacoustics) has emerged as an effective technology that is well suited for this purpose. In a close collaboration between HRNERR, NYSDEC, and Cornell University, this project team helped augment traditional survey methods with passive acoustic monitoring techniques. The team deployed PAM devices at 12 locations in and around the reserve. These devices allowed the team to record soundscapes at each site, gathering information about individual species, natural phenomena (e.g. rain), and human activity (e.g. vessels, trains). With the resulting data, the team characterized a diverse range of soundscapes across a latitudinal and salinity gradient along the Hudson River, and compared sounds from tributary and wetland habitats to those of the main channel of the river.

This collaborative bioacoustics research and education effort has yielded the largest data set of riverine acoustic recordings in the world and produced several important products that directly contribute to management, conservation, and education outcomes. One of the team's most significant findings was the identification of spawning-related sounds produced by Atlantic sturgeon, a federally listed endangered species. The novel documentation of species-specific sounds from sturgeon enables further PAM studies to characterize sturgeon spawning and migration phenology, patterns of spatial occurrence, and habitat use. Another key finding was the acoustic prevalence of non-native freshwater drum at the Atlantic sturgeon spawning site. While freshwater drum are known to be present in the Hudson River, the extent of their colonization, and their interactions with native species, are not well characterized. Freshwater drum chorusing was observed to dominate the underwater soundscape for several hours each day between early June and late July, overlapping with the Atlantic sturgeon spawning period. This finding led to a follow-on project funded by the New York State Water Resources Institute (WRI) aimed at using sound to characterize space use by Atlantic sturgeon and freshwater drum at this site, and quantify overlaps, to identify possible negative impacts on the sturgeon and inform freshwater drum management strategies. Key educational outputs from this project also include an in-person public listening exhibit with a library of sounds from the Hudson River, and interactive Story Map and curriculum which lay the foundation for training students as investigators.

The Impact

  • Created strong and positive working relationships and increased interest in PAM collaborations with NYSDEC staff, NERRS staff, and Cornell University researchers.
  • Led to novel applications of PAM in the region (e.g. the project team was invited by the HRNERR Aquatic Invasive Species taskforce to help guide bioacoustics monitoring on aquatic macrophyte habitats and restoration evaluation).
  • Increased use of bioacoustics case studies in classroom teaching, KEEP programs, and Teachers on the Estuary (TOTE) offerings (e.g. this project inspired a professional development workshop session for educators participating in TOTE).
  • Increased online accessibility of acoustic library and river soundscape experiences to reach broader audiences.
  • Shared knowledge generated by this project to inform a parallel effort in North Carolina to conserve Atlantic Sturgeon.