Plant Monitoring

Plant monitoring is essential for the New York State and Local Hydrilla Task Forces to get an estimate of remaining hydrilla populations each year. This information is used to determine locations of herbicide treatment, duration of the treatments, and appropriate dosages. In order for eradication to be successful, complete depletion of hydrilla biomass and hydrilla tubers is needed. The Cayuga Inlet biotype of hydrilla appears to emerge in late spring and often delays growth toward the surface until late July/early August, where it continues to elongate into late fall.

Task Force monitoring and assessment of hydrilla tuber densities in the sediment, overall plant species presence, and plant species abundance helps to establish a baseline describing the plant community for that year. Each year, sediment core and rake-toss sampling data have been used in order to perform these assessments.

Plant monitoring has been conducted since 2012 and the reports for each year are available below, this effort has been conducted by the Racine-Johnson Aquatic Ecologists of Ithaca, NY. The reports list aquatic plant data collected by surveys each year using the line intercept method (Madsen 1999) in Cayuga Inlet, Fall Creek and Cayuga Lake by Racine-Johnson Aquatic Ecologists of Ithaca, NY.

Below are the full reports for each year. If you experience issues accessing the reports try the following browsers Google Chrome or Internet Explorer.

Plant Monitoring 2019 (15 MB)

Plant Monitoring 2016 (33 MB)

Plant Monitoring 2015 (30 MB)

Plant Monitoring 2014 (40 MB)

Plant Monitoring 2013 (16 MB)

Plant Monitoring 2012 (31 MB)

Last updated January 15, 2020