Development of a Multi-Platform Volunteered Geographic Information Application for Monitoring Invasive Species of Asian Carp in the Upper Mississippi River System

Abstract

Since their introduction into North America, Grass carp, Silver carp, and Bighead carp have significantly damaged aquatic environments by outcompeting native species for resources. Tracking these non-indigenous aquatic species is critical for determining the deployment of control barriers such as alarm pheromones. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), a geographic information systems (GIS) framework, is used to gather information on public phenomenon over space and time. VGI for recording sightings of non-indigenous aquatic species has not been fully investigated by the scientific community. This study developed a mobile responsive VGI Web GIS app to facilitate the recording of the presence of Asian carp within the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS). To facilitate the collection of these invasive species by the community, a feature template was developed in an enterprise geodatabase and published to ArcGIS for server. In order to prevent volunteers from entering incorrect information, range domains were set to limit numeric fields and coded value domains were applied to string fields. Web development languages manipulating the jQuery mobile API and the ArcGIS API for JavaScript were used to modify a simplified attribute editing module from the Dojo library. This app has the potential to increase location and metadata accuracy by eliminating lag time between transferring field notes to electronic records, a current system of tracking Asian carp. The Web GIS VGI app will alert authorities to pinpoint where barrier techniques are needed to halt the spread of Asian carp to other aquatic environments.