Yesterday the streams were high & cold & the worst weather of the season was predicted, so I figured it would be a fine day to go do some field work. FFIM owns & operates 4 stream temperature loggers in 4 downeast streams. These loggers measure the water temp every 15 minutes & store the data - once every year or so we visit these stations, offload the data, process it & upload it to a regional website that displays the data for anyone to view and/or use. There are over 7700 of these stations just in Maine and most of them can be viewed at this site: http://db.ecosheds.org/ FFIM's stations are not viewable by the public, so as not to draw attention to sensitive waters.
As a part of our partnership with the USF&WS, last spring we were given 2 more data loggers (Tidbits), a new field data collector (Shuttle) and upgraded software. This generous gift will allow us to expand the program by 50% and greatly streamline our data management. I have to say that working with the dedicated, professional scientists at the USF&WS, NOAA and the USGS has been nothing but a pleasure - they've always been more than willing to help us out. It's also very interesting to see how much their missions overlap...
Aside from aiding myriad students, scientists, researchers & policy makers, this data can also be utilized by fishermen. For instance, if you want to be fishing a particular stream in the NW corner of Maine at 58*, all you have to do is go to the SHEDS site and look at the data for comparable streams in the area and plan your trip accordingly - that, and if you're a science nerd like me, it's just damn interesting to go in there and peruse the data...
And now for a guessing game based on the 2019 aggregate data for our 4 streams - I'll post the answers later.
1- What is the median date on which our streams reached & stayed at 47*, the optimal brookie spawning temp?
2 - What is the median date on which our streams reached & stayed at 70*?
3 - What is the median date on which our streams reached their highest temps of the year?
4 - What was the highest temp reached by any of our streams?
Good luck & remember that your support of FFIM fund raisers helps us fund projects like this and many other incredibly worthwhile projects - tight lines & Happy Holidays!
Brian
That all is very interesting. Thank you for your time and effort. It’s just mind boggling the amount of information out there that is available to so many. That was a much better choice than our original plans as the mid-coast rivers are still way high. I bet there was a fine local brewery at the end of your trek. Ron
Fogtown Brewery in Ellsworth would have been the obvious choice, especially if I could have bellied up to the bar, except by the time I got done, all I wanted to do was get home...but...the way things are dropping, some streams could be fishable by this Saturday - stay tuned! I'll have some quiz answers momentarily.
Guesses:
spawn temp: 10/22
hot temps: 6/19
peak temp date: 7/28
peak temp on all streams: 86 F
Sounds like a pretty cool project -- thanks for your effort here. I also like playing with data quite a bit. A fair amount of my professional life revolves around working with energy consumption and weather data. The world of data collection continues to evolve quickly and get dramatically cheaper and there's no reason why we shouldn't have a lot more data collected to support fisheries management decisions. For looking at data, you might have fun turning the data into hourly data and then using this free tool called DView. That SHEDS resource is pretty neat. I hadn't seen it before either.