Modeling Common Carp Under-ice Movement Using Hierarchical Markov Simulation

Common carp is an invasive species in North American waters, disrupting ecological systems and replacing native species in water systems they enter. Mass removal by seining of this species from infected waters is a labor-intensive task that requires knowledge of their behavior and popular aggregation locations. It has been shown that carp tend to aggregate and slow down during winter months leaving them potentially vulnerable to seining. In 2010, Hennen used a fixed telemetry system to track carp movement during ice-cover periods and reported on their spatial distributions. Expanding on this work, we propose a model to describe the discrete movement of carp through a fixed telemetry system using a Bayesian Hierarchical Markov model.