AUTHORS: Aaron Muehler, Ball State University; Amy Kinsley, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Nicholas Phelps, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Paul Venturelli, Ball State University
ABSTRACT: Recreational anglers and boaters can be a major vector of the spread of aquatic invasive species (AIS), but movement patterns are oftentimes poorly understood due to the difficulties of collecting data. Currently, Minnesota collects movement data through statewide watercraft inspection stations. In the past these data have been leveraged to predict movement patterns of anglers and boaters. As such, these data are the current gold standard, but there may be another option. A potentially innovative and economical solution is to obtain movement data from smartphone applications (apps) in the form of angler recorded catch times and locations. Aggregate forms of these data can then be used to describe and predict the relative popularity of lakes, and the flow of traffic among them. The goal of this study was to gain insight into the ways that big data can improve predictors of pathways of AIS spread. To that end, we employed predictive modeling previously used to build a movement network with watercraft inspection data and applied it to data from a popular fishing app, Fishbrain. We found that these two networks were comparable and displayed a high level of connectivity among Minnesota waterbodies, potentially furthering the spread of AIS. Although similar, differences present likely stemmed from biases in which group of anglers were surveyed within each collection method. Simply, watercraft inspections only targeted watercraft users, while Fishbrain provided data for both shore and private access anglers, along with boaters. These insights are essential to the design and optimization of prevention, detection, and monitoring efforts for Minnesota and may allow for enhanced resource allocation. These results also provide insight into how this approach can be expanded to inform larger efforts (e.g., the Great Lakes Region, contiguous U.S.), and set the stage for future work.
