Eavesdropping on trout building their nests
Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - 11:20
in Earth & Climate
Steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) stir up the sediment of the river bed when building their spawning pits, thus influencing the composition of the river bed and the transport of sediment. Until now, this process could only be studied visually, irregularly and with great effort in the natural environment of the fish. Now, researchers led by Michael Dietze of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam have used seismic sensors (geophones) to analyze the trout's nest-building process in detail. The study was published in the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms.