Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

We are requesting the Hoverguard 700 to provide a research operating platform that allows safe access to challenging field sites. This hovercraft can be used on saltwater, freshwater, ice, mud and in saltmarshes, and will support three research programs. Dr. Litvak will use this vehicle to access overwintering sites of sturgeon in the Saint John River. Finding and describing these sites is important because during winter sturgeons reduce activity and aggregate, allowing for accurate population estimates. Currently, Dr. Litvak and his students are restricted to searching for overwintering sites during a short period when there is sufficient ice cover. The hovercraft expands the potential of his research and will lead to a more precise estimate of the populations of these threatened species. Dr. Hamilton, in collaboration with Dr. Barbeau, studies intertidal mudflat community ecology. Much of her research focuses on interactions between the amphipod Corophium volutator, its invertebrate predators and competitors, and migrating Semipalmated Sandpipers (Calidris pusilla). C. volutator is central to the mudflat ecosystem and is an essential food resource for these birds when they are present in the upper Bay of Fundy. A clear understanding of the dynamics of C. volutator populations is important in both community-ecological and conservation contexts. The Hovercraft will allow us to sample mudflats more completely and efficiently, and to reach muddy shores that are currently inaccessible. Dr. Barbeau also studies salt marshes which are characterized by tough, salt-tolerant grasses which grow on soils that are regularly covered by tidal water. They are very productive ecosystems that serve a number of critical environmental functions, such as storing carbon, filtering pollution, providing nursery habitat to a diversity of organisms, and sheltering coasts from sea level rise or storm activity. The ecology of salt marshes has been extensively studied in southern climates, but in northern climates, particularly in areas with severe, icy winters, there is much that remains unknown about the basic ecological processes at work in the salt marsh. The Hovercraft platform will afford much greater access to these important and relatively poorly-studied areas.