Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program Long Term Resource Monitoring

A framework for research and applied management technical support in the Fish Component of the UMRR LTRM.  A completion report submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program from the U.S. Geological Survey

Ickes, B. 2018.  A framework for research and applied management technical support in the Fish Component of the UMRR LTRM.  A completion report submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program from the U.S. Geological Survey, LTRM-2018B14. 74 pp.

Abstract

The Long Term Resource Monitoring (LTRM) element of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer (Corps) Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) program on the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) stands as the United States’ largest river monitoring and research program and has amassed geospatial, hydrological, biological, and chemical databases unrivaled in other North American river systems.   Presently, the LTRM is transitioning from a period of data banking, critical program evaluations, and data serving initiatives into a period of directed research and modeling to better understand ecosystem properties and dynamics in this heavily human-impacted river basin.   Notably, the UMRS is managed as a multiple-use resource, resulting in rich research opportunities for conducting socially-relevant science.

This framework identifies several research topics and questions that can be addressed with existing data resources in the basin.   A variety of topics is forwarded in an attempt to match research topics with individual interests, and to foster distributed, collaborative approaches to research across the basin (and beyond).   In all, a “systemic UMRS” perspective is pursued.  In addition, ideas are outlined for technically-supporting applied management actions in the UMRS basin.

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