UMESC Overview Video - textual equivalent of Audio content (Written text) As the nations largest civilian mapping and water, earth, and biological science agency, the U.S. Geological Survey works in cooperation with more than 2000 organizations across the country to provide reliable and impartial scientific information to resource managers, planners, and other customers. Sound Science for Better Management. An Introduction to the U.S. Geological Survey's Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (Narrator) Our nation has been blessed with an amazing diversity of natural resources: rich soils, numerous lakes and rivers, and many forms of plant and animal life. The responsibility for protecting, maintaining, and in some cases restoring these resources lies with a complex arrangement of federal, state, and non-government partners. The U.S. Geological Survey's Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center is providing these groups with the scientific information they need to successfully manage our country's natural resources. The present center started in 1962 as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Fish Control Laboratory in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Laboratory scientists initially studied ways of controlling non-native species like carp and parasitic sea lamprey. Chemicals developed by the Fishery Drug Research and Development program at the lab were highly successful in limiting sea lamprey populations in the Great Lakes, an accomplishment enabling the recovery of lake trout populations decimated by sea lampreys during the 1940's and 1950's With the building of a new facility in the late 1970's the center was renamed the National Fisheries Research Laboratory, significantly enhanced its ability to conduct quality scientific research. A 1998 merger with the Environmental Management Technical Center in Onalaska created a new entity within the U.S. Geological Survey: the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center. The center now has over a hundred staff representing a wide range of scientific and technical disciplines. Center facilities include state-of-the-art laboratory space, almost 50 experimental ponds and raceways, and a fish culture area for supplying fish used in research studies. The facilities also incorporate the latest advancements in computer and information technology. The center is a leader is applying geospatial technologies to environmental issues. The staff provides maps, remote sensing research, and Geographic Information Systems support to help guide management decisions on everything from paddlefish, to canvasback ducks, to island construction proposals. Anyone with an Internet connection can access massive amounts of spatial and environmental data through the center's Great River Data Shoppe, a data clearinghouse enabling customers to find the right information in the right format at the right time. The center provides many opportunities for community involvement. Scientists often give tours and presentations to school and community groups. Educational opportunities are also available for high school and college students through volunteer and internship programs Center researchers conduct a wide range of scientific investigations. At the broadest scale, researchers focus primarily on two large ecosystems: the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. Researchers address numerous issues considered important by national resource managers and partners within organizations such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service, and state agencies. Areas of research include large river ecology, drug research and development for aquaculture, declining and endangered species, wildlife ecology with an emphasis on migratory birds, and environmental contaminants. Large rivers are one of most precious natural resources. These systems have immense ecological value, which support transportation and recreational activities worth billions of dollars. Center staff has focused on the ecology of large rivers including the Upper Mississippi River and its tributaries for almost 20 years. One component of large river ecology is the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP) - the nation's largest river ecosystem monitoring program. (Ken Lubinski, Aquatic Ecologist) The purpose of the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program is to collect objective, consistent scientific data on the ecosystem of the Upper Mississippi River. We do that through a network of field stations, 5 on the Mississippi River and 1 on the Illinois River. The designers of the program were concerned about the fact that several aspects of the ecosystem were declining, and the value of the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program is that it helps us measure the rates of decline of habitat diversity and habitat quality. However, the other vital aspect of the LTRMP is that we've been able to also indicate when certain aspects of the river are improving in quality. Certain aspects of water quality - habitat rehabilitation projects - have all been beneficial to river animals and plants, and so in addition to pointing out river problems, the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program is vitally important in demonstrating to the public when certain management and regulatory actions pay off in the long run. (Narrator) Large rivers are home to a wide variety of fish and other wildlife. Some populations of fish are declining because of changes humans have made to the river systems. Researchers at the center are working closely with river managers to determine how the fish and fisheries of the Upper Mississippi River are affected by these human factors. (Steve Zigler, Fishery Biologist) Paddlefish were common components of the fish community before about 1900 in the Central United States and in the Mississippi River Basin in particular. Since that time populations have been heavily impacted by human alteration of river systems, and also over harvest. Since 1994, we've been conducting a radio telemetry study in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to evaluate the effects of human modifications of large rivers, especially the effects of dams on paddlefish movement, also on their key habitats and reproduction. The information from our study will be useful to resource agencies for evaluating what are the appropriate scales for managing paddlefish stocks in the Mississippi and other rivers, as well as evaluating the effects of dams in impeding paddlefish passage, spawning and also other migrations. (Narrator) Recreational fishing is a major pastime for 50 million Americans, and is heavily dependant on fish produced in pubic hatcheries. (Bill Gingerich, Supervisory Physiology) Lack of drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to control or prevent diseases seriously impairs the productivity of public hatcheries. Public hatcheries in the U.S., both state and federal, act to both conserve our depleted gene pool of threatened and endangered species, it also contributes directly to substantial recreation fisheries estimated to be worth some sixty-nine billion dollars. Scientists at the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center are currently contributing research that will support a database that will allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve five new drugs that can be used in public aquaculture. (Narrator) Many plant and animal species in the United States are threatened or endangered. Habitat and species restoration is critical for reestablishing populations of these plants and animals. Center researchers provide resource managers with information needed for species and habitat restoration. The work on freshwater mussels is an example of this type of research. (Theresa Newton, Aquatic Ecologist) These are freshwater mussels and they're actually the largest group of endangered animals in North America. In the United States we've got about 300 species, in the Upper Mississippi River Basin maybe about 30-35 species. However, about 70% of these animals are extinct, endangered, threatened, or of special concern. There are a lot of potential reasons for the decline but the truth is we really don't know what factor or combination of factors is actually contributing to the decline. (Narrator) Center staff conducts studies that attempt to shed light on the behavior and habitat requirements of wildlife species. One example of this research involves grassland birds. (Eileen Kirsch, Research Wildlife Biologist) I'm studying abundance and biodiversity of grassland birds in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lands in the Upper Midwest where we're looking at wet meadows and restored grasslands. We're interested in looking at the effect of monocultures of reed canary grass versus areas that have more diversity where you have mixes of sedges and other types of grasses. We're also looking at the effects of burning and haying for management of wet meadows and restored grasslands and the effects on the vegetation as well as the grassland birds. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is very interested in the data we are collecting from this project so that it will help them manage grasslands in the Upper Midwest for the benefit of grassland birds (Narrator) The pollution of our land and water with a variety of contaminants is a serious problem. Center researchers are examining the threats posed by these contaminants to living organisms. (Bill Richardson, Aquatic Ecologist) The work we see being done here in these backwaters is part of a much larger effort to evaluate nitrogen cycling on a large scale. We are working with partners from Water Resources division, from the Menlo Park lab; we're working with scientists from the Middleton, Wisconsin lab. We're looking at nitrogen movement through subsurface waters, we're looking at stable isotopes of nitrogen to see if we can detect signals of denitrification in the animals, we're also working with local states' departments of natural resources on a larger scale pool-wide manipulation which will draw down the level of the pool in Navigation Pool 8 in an attempt to grow more macrophytes. What this will do for nitrogen cycling especially is provide carbon that the microbial community needs to start moving nitrogen out of the water, out of the sediments and into the atmosphere. The backwaters we're finding are very critical for providing the carbon resources that the microbes need to process nitrogen, and we've found from our monitoring data that it's in the backwaters where we have the greatest and most rapid cycling of nitrogen, and so we are going to be focusing a lot of our effort on looking at nitrogen cycling within backwaters including the work that you've seen here with our scientists looking at the sediments. (Narrator) Balancing the competing demands upon the environment is a major challenge as we enter a new millennium. Managers and decision makers face many complex problems as they struggle to maintain our natural resources. The Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center is working to meet this challenge by providing sound science for better management.