PNNL

Abstract

In northern climates, locating overwintering fish can be very challenging due to thick ice cover. Areas near the coast of the Beaufort Sea provide valuable overwintering habitat for both resident and anadromous fish species; identifying and understanding their use of overwintering areas is of special interest. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from two spaceborne satellites was examined as an alternative to radiotelemetry for identifying anadromous fish overwintering. The presence of water and ice were sampled at 162 sites and fish were sampled at 16 of these sites. From SAR imagery alone, we successfully identified large pools inhabited by overwintering fish in the ice-covered Sagavanirktok River. In addition, the imagery was able to identify all of the larger pools (mean minimum length of 138m (range 15-470 m; SD=131)) of water located by field sampling. The effectiveness of SAR to identify these pools varied from 31% to 100%, depending on imagery polarization, the incidence angle range, and the orbit. Horizontal transmit–vertical receive (HV) polarization appeared best. The accuracy of SAR was also assessed at a finer pixel-by-pixel (30-m x30-m) scale. The best correspondence at this finer scale was obtained with an image having HV polarization. The levels of agreement ranged from 54% to 69%. The presence of broad whitefish (the only anadromous species present) was associated with salinity and pool size (estimated with SAR imagery); fish were more likely to be found in larger pools with low salinity. This research illustrates that SAR imaging has great potential for identifying under-ice overwintering areas of riverine fish. These techniques should allow managers to identify critical overwintering areas with relatively more ease and lower cost than traditional techniques.