Covered by water drift how to#

Wang emphasizes that biology is not his specialty. It they can predict where carp eggs are likely to be at any point in time, they can share these data with others who are working to curb the species’ spread. Wang and his colleagues want to learn how water turbulence affects the drift of fish eggs. Without turbulence, he says, their eggs would sink and die. In fact, he notes, it “happens in every moment of river flow, everywhere.” It’s also very important to the carp he studies. The chaotic motion of that mix is also turbulence in action, Wang notes. Or watched a coffee drinker stir creamer into their brew. You may have experienced turbulence during a bumpy ride on an airplane. It rushes, ripples, trickles, cascades, dribbles and drips across the landscape. Water in a stream or river doesn’t flow smoothly. Most importantly, their findings may point toward solutions for some important environmental threats. Others hope to track plumes of polluted air or water - and determine where they’re coming from.

Some of these drift detectives want to know if large icebergs threaten offshore oil platforms.

Covered by water drift how to#

But Wang is among a cadre of researchers looking to show how to forecast it. Stopping their spread would help reduce the overall damage they cause.ĭrifting might seem unpredictable. But if science is too slow to answer this question, legions of carp eggs will grow into adults that outcompete their neighbors. If science can get ahead of the problem, there’s hope people may figure out how to stop it. But finding answers may head off crises.Īt the University of Missouri in Columbia, civil and environmental engineer Binbin Wang is working to figure out where eggs of the invasive fish are spreading in the Missouri River. Anticipating where something will drift can be a thorny challenge. And as the fish spawn, their eggs have been drifting far and wide. Today, the descendants of those carp remain a big problem.

Binbin Wang is using a combination of computer modeling and field experiments to study how the eggs of these and other invasive carp could be transported in the Missouri River. Bighead carp are an invasive species in the United States.