Integrating Habitat Mapping into Florida's Freshwater Fisheries Long Term Monitoring Program

The Freshwater Fisheries Long Term Monitoring (LTM) Program of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission began in 2006 with the intent to obtain standardized data that could be used by managers to determine trends in sportfish abundance, species composition, mortality, growth, size structure, and utilization by anglers for Florida’s important freshwater fisheries.  The LTM Program has 30 core lakes that are sampled annually for these metrics.  With this program in place, there was a growing need to develop an efficient method of collecting habitat information in these lakes so that habitat quality and quantity could be monitored over time.  Therefore, our objective was to develop sampling protocols that would provide accurate lake-wide estimates of percent area covered and percent volume infested with submersed and emergent vegetation in lakes that are part of the LTM Program.  After investigating different techniques used for sampling aquatic vegetation, we determined that two methods of remote sensing fit our objective.  These include hydroacoustic sensing for mapping submersed vegetation and the interpretation of satellite imagery for mapping emergent vegetation.  With sampling protocols developed, annual mapping efforts will take place during the peak growing season, beginning summer 2015.