OpportunityTitle: Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Great Lakes Northern Forests CESU
AdditionalInformationOnEligibility: This financial assistance opportunity is being issued under a Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Program.  CESU&#226;&#191;&#191;s are partnerships that provide research, technical assistance, and education.  Eligible recipients must be a participating partner of the Great Lakes Northern Forests (CESU) Program.
Description: The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Great Lakes Science Center is offering a funding opportunity for a new research project to build a robot-assisted computer vision system capable of gathering photos of the lake bottom and automatically extracting information from them about key biological and physical attributes. The computer vision system should consist of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV; to be furnished by USGS) customized to gather well-lit and focused stereo photo mosaics of the lake bottom, plus computer algorithms to analyze features present in the images. Bottom features of interest include: (1) densities of round goby and other benthic fishes, (2) presence and volume of water occupied by Cladophora, and (3) bottom habitat type and topographic complexity. Together these data will enable important management questions to be answered about invasive species, eutrophication, and habitat conditions on the lake bottom
GrantorContactEmailDescription: Contract Specialist
GrantorContactText: Faith Graves 703-648-7356&lt;br/&gt;fgraves@usgs.gov&lt;br/&gt;