Monitoring and research inform the restoration and management of the Upper Mississippi River

Session: Great Lakes Fish Habitat Priorities Development, Implementation, and Adaptive Management (1)

Jeffrey Houser, USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, [email protected]
Kristen Bouska, USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, [email protected]
Nathan De Jager, USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, [email protected]
Brian Ickes, USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, [email protected]
KathiJo Jankowski, USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, [email protected]
James Rogala, USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, [email protected]
Jason Rohweder, USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, [email protected]
Molly Van Appledorn, USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, [email protected]

Abstract

The Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) program has been constructing habitat rehabilitation projects, and conducting long-term monitoring and research on the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) since the late 1980s. The Long Term Resource Monitoring element (LTRM) of this program strives to detect and understand important changes in the river, and inform its restoration and management. Several recent, and ongoing, projects have integrated science, restoration, and management expertise. We recently completed an assessment of large-scale indicators of the condition of the UMRS based on systemic landcover and bathymetry data sets, and used the results to inform a systemic Habitat Needs Assessment. We are assessing the ecological resilience of the UMRS to understand the characteristics of the system that contribute to its ecological resilience and the implications for its restoration and management.  We have adopted an approach to developing and prioritizing research projects that capitalizes on the diverse knowledge contained within the broad partnership of the UMRR (multiple state and federal agencies). This presentation will briefly describe these three efforts, what we have learned, and the challenges that remain in using the knowledge we’ve gained to restore and manage the UMRS.