Community Problem Introduction: Managing animal populations is crucial for sustaining future hunting and fishing opportunities.

If one part of a food chain is altered, then entire chain is also altered. The Copper River is no exception to this rule. As a result various government and law enforcement agencies are charged with the responsibility of managing and overseeing the care of the wild salmon populations. Since the Cooper River has 13 major tributaries, and a watershed of more than 26,000 square miles the only place to get an accurate count of the salmon population that has entered the river is at Miles Lake sonar station, which is itself miles and miles upriver. The data in this problem is real data from the Copper River Watershed Project and the National Park Service U.S. Dept. of the Interior. Grade Level: 5 -6

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Problem: It is the year 2005, and Alaska State Biologists are trying to project future salmon populations. The only problem is they have misplaced some data. They know that commercial fishermen caught 1,337,000 sockeye salmon. The Biologists also know that 578,927 sockeye salmon escaped past the sonar booth at Miles Lake. Out of that population 72,000 sockeyes were caught by subsistence fishermen. Fishermen catching for personal use caught 120,000 in another part of the river, and 15,000 were caught by sports fishermen throughout the Copper River drainage. The total sockeye population count for 2005 was 2,494,927 salmon. In order to plan for future salmon seasons they need to know what the escapement was for salmon that made it up the river, and actually survived to spawn. What was the total number of salmon that were not caught? Solution: It seems odd that the scientists involved would misplace important data like this, but we have the tools necessary to solve the problem. We have to think about missing data. If we know the total, and all other variable populations we can solve for the unknown number. If we add all the populations that were caught, and subtract them from the total we are left with the number of salmon that escaped capture! 1,337,000 + 120,000 + 578,927 + 72,000 + 15,000 + x = 2,494,927 2,122,927 + x = 2,494,927 2,949,927 2,122,927 = x X = 372,000 salmon escapement Answer: The total sockeye salmon escapement for 2005 was 372,000 sockeye. Now the biologists can plan for a successful, and plentiful, salmon harvest in the future!

Student Comments : Attached Files : Instructor Feedback Grade : 5.00 out of 5 Comments :

Excellent problem! Great community/culture connection as well as being well thought out and grade level applicable.
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