Meeting Agenda

  1. Stationary acoustics
  2. PhDone planning
  3. eatFAT next steps and meeting planning
  4. Summer plans: ELA diversion acoustics (Blanchfield), field course?
  5. Funding: MITACS (nothing new here)

Agenda specific notes

  1. Stationary acoustics
    1. Full workflow working nicely. Approach is that R sets parameters and queues operators within EV. Every lake/day is run consistently because of rigid workflow. Can now work through an acoustic-day within 1hr (rather than half-day)
    2. In full 8hr day can make it through an entire lake. Nearly complete 2 lakes so far. All stationary acoustics data will be processed by end of January
    3. Workflow extracts two variable types.
      1. Volume targets (schools, small fishes, invert clouds); mean backscattering in cells/regions
      2. Single targets (fish). This approach does a really nice job of isolating fish and I feel fully confident in the tracks I’m making

         

  2. PhDone Planning
    1. Plan to finish by end of Winter 2024 semester. Final day on current academic calendar to submit completed thesis is May 3, 2024
    2. Working backwards…
    Task Date
    Final Revisions, no later May 3, 2024
    PhD oral defence and public presentation April 17, 2024
    Written dissertation sent to external examiner (3 months prior to defence… any wiggle room here?) January 17, 2024
    First complete dissertation draft Nov 1, 2023
    MITACS travel grant? Write-up somewhere? Oct - Dec 2023
    Committee meeting Beginning of September, 2023
    Apply for time extension of 3 terms (SS,Fall,Winter) March 2023
    Committee meeting Week of March 6, 13 or 20, 2023
    1. Detailed workplan for next 4 months (plus a little long-range forecasting)
    Ch. 1 - Life hist. Ch. 2 - telemetry Ch. 3 - acoustics Ch. 4 - modelling eatFAT
    Ask/get Algonquin data (class 2; Ridgway) Get R dataflow organized for L224, apply to L223 Data processing completion by Jan 2023 At March 2023 Committee Meeting, have conversation of best way to approach this Send email to organize a meeting week of Jan 9
    Add new ELA [Hg] data (Montana) Approach Blanchfield once data processed for 223, 224; Acquire telemetry data for L373 and L626 Preliminary results and interpretation by Feb 10, 2023 Meaningful integration of life history, telemtery, and acoustics - how? Use activity-informed bioenergetic models (my work) to compare to standard Wisconsin models. Meeting updates relating to action items from December meeting notes
    Run standard vonBs, do we get the same answer? Start work on this immediately after SCAS. Have something ready for committee meeting Create SCAS poster by Feb 15 Does it make sense for this to be stand alone? Another chapter could just be seasonal acoustics and this could be incorporated into acoustics chapter. Get modelling summary by March 13, 2023
    Revisit multivariate statistics. Current approach is RDA, should try LDA (can fish [Hg] predict lake classes?) Have all results finished by August 2023 Speak w. Liset; incorporate metabolic link to her swim speeds …I like the idea of this being standalone - integrating spatial and temporal aspects of activity and life history seems quite useful, but open to suggestions CIEE report first draft by April 3
    With other commitments, the above should take ~3 weeks (waiting on data, data wrangling, analysis Submit to journal after submitting dissertation to external examiner Submit to journal by end of Aug OR wait on bioenergetics? Submit to journal after dissertation delivered to external examiner Submit CIEE final report by May 15, 2023
    ~2 weeks to produce initial draft
    Journal submission by mid July 2023
    1. Extra things to fit in, or not
      • Particle Size Spectra
        • For ELA lakes I have phyto, zooplankton, and fish size structure; for Algonquin lakes have all but phytoplankton (I would assume).
        • What is the question here? Looking for correlation b/w activity rates and PSS? Seems like it could be useful as an alternative hypothesis to lake class classifications. Also seems like it could be a standalone piece
        • If worthwhile, will need to run samples on Dak’s flow cam. Already spoke with VK and this is doable and should be pretty straightforward for only wanting zooplankton size structure. Likely a couple weeks of work. Could do in April?
      • L239 Seasonal Acoustics
        • Now that I’m confident with acoustics workflow, this should be fairly straightforward. Just a matter of running all the dates (of which there are many). Maybe start w. 5-7 days per month (would represent ~4 or 5 days of work). Would like to make as best use of the data that I did collect though so would be good to get through it eventually (maybe that’s my new beer-drinking activity haha)
      • Anything else I’m missing here? Isotopes would be nice (to formalize pred-prey links in another way) but maybe too much too late in the game (and not necessarily available for all acoustic lakes)

         

  3. eatFAT next steps and meeting planning
    1. Need to setup a meeting for late-Jan or early-Feb to get progress report on action items and to determine what’s needed for the final CIEE report. Will send out a when2meet to group this week
    2. Plan to ask group for updates on their respective portions by mid-March. I will then take a couple weeks to get a draft together
    3. During meeting we will also need to discuss future fieldwork plans. I need to figure out what I would like my involvement to be - I would like to be involved, but I would also like to finish my PhD!

       

  4. Summer plans: ELA diversion acoustics (Blanchfield), field course?
    1. L373 and L626 Acoustics
      • Had initial conversations with Paul that if our mobile setup actually became a reality that we could run post-diversion acoustic surveys. Haven’t thought too seriously about this but I’d be interested in doing so if surveys are planned. Depending on if Paul has money available for this, could help me with trying to cobble rent + food money together for next year (as well as being super useful experience + connections for me).
      • Still need a mobile acoustic cradle though…didn’t hear back from the fabricator since I asked back in late-September.
    2. ELA fieldcourse
      • Another way of possibly cobbling some money together if you’re offering the course again (which I’m not sure you’d even know at this point), and just another good experience for me.

         

  5. Funding: MITACS (nothing new here)
    1. Plan to write-up an Accelerate draft proposal by Feb 3 at latest
    2. Still somewhat interested in MITACS travel grant, too. Whole pandemic thing of forever has got me having itchy feet and at the right place, and with a strict self-imposed writing schedule, I think this could be productive. Also a rare chance going forward I would have this relative amount of freedom to do something like this (no real commitments keeping me in any one place)