Facilities
USACE Cognitive Ecology Research Flume
The Cognitive Ecology Laboratory (CEL) will consist of a flume, an assortment of holding tanks for staging experimental animals and the necessary life support systems. The CEL flume consists of two straight sections (40 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 4.5 feet deep) with water velocities up to 6 ft/sec available. Two stand alone systems containing six 5 foot diameter tanks will be available. The environmental conditions will be monitored and maintained using water quality monitoring equipment, alarm systems, and backup power in order to minimize risk to an experiment from a power outage. Mechanical and biological filtration will be employed and water will be supplied by an on-site well. Full biological control of aquatic species is planned so that invasive species can be used in the lab with no risk to surrounding water bodies. Chillers and heaters will be used to maintain temperatures of 50 to 80 degrees(F) depending on experimental needs. The flume will be instrumented with a fish tracking system that will allow high-precision fish movement data. In addition, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models will be used to describe the flume hydrodynamic conditions. The purpose of the flume is to develop algorithms of animal behavior and decision making suitable for basic research and, by extension, improve the engineering design of hydraulic structures in rivers through ELAMs.
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