Bethany Boisvert  

M.S. Candidate
Department of Natural Resources
Cornell University

Advisor: Dr. Clifford E. Kraft

206G Fernow Hall
Department of Natural Resources
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

bab73@cornell.edu
CV


Research Interests

My interest and experiences are broad, ranging from freshwater ecology and fisheries to paleontology to climate change. I am most curious about how factors such as habitat, climate variability, land use, and water management affect survival and distribution of stream biota. I am drawn to reach and watershed-scale questions that require an integration of ecology, behavior, limnology, and hydrology for a thorough investigation. Although my interests are from a conservation of resources perspective, I believe that productively balancing human needs and recreation with ecosystem health is essential.

 
Current Research

The Effects of Recreational Flow Releases on Trout in the Hudson Gorge Primitive Area

The Hudson Gorge Primitive Area lies within the Adirondack Park, NY. Nearby, water is released from the Lake Abanakee Dam into the upper Hudson River via the Indian River for the local whitewater rafting industry. The releases occur 4 days a week, for approximately 2 hours, throughout the summer and increase discharge by an order of magnitude.  The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) is currently developing a unit management plan  for this primitive area. One of the goals of the plan is to provide strategies to best protect the river’s resources while accommodating human recreation. A collaborative project (U.S.Geological Survey, NYSDEC, Cornell and the Adirondack Park Agency) was initiated in 2004 to understand what resources exist within these sections of the Indian and Hudson Rivers and how they are affected by the recreational releases. My research is focused on the recreational trout fishery. I am also involved with characterizing the thermal and physical habitat and the fish populations within the rivers.   

The recreational releases may be impacting the survival and behavior of stocked brown trout (Salmo trutta). We have been utilizing radio-telemetry to investigate this possibility. Temperature-sensitive radio transmitters are implanted in 2 year-old brown trout to gather data on the use of physical habitat, movements and body temperatures (which indicate the temperature of water in which they are residing). Summer temperatures in all study reaches exceed potentially lethal levels for mature brown trout, thus, trout are thought to rely on cold-water refuges for long-term survival. Results from a pilot study during the summer of 2005 indicate that releases did not substantially alter river temperatures; however, increased discharge appeared to dilute localized thermal refuges. A small percentage of the brown trout were found to occupy thermal refuges for part of the study and some were disturbed from those refuges during releases. Further analysis of aerial thermal images, additional trout-telemetry surveys, white cell differential counts and comparison to a reference reach are planned to better quantify trout survival, movement patterns, utilization of thermal refuges, and immune response under release and non-release conditions.

 
Researchers at UNC Chapel Hill and Colgate University are also working within the Indian and Hudson Rivers.