Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program Long Term Resource Monitoring

Scientific Framework for Resilience Research on the Upper Mississippi River System

Bouska, K. L. 2019.  Scientific Framework for Resilience Research on the Upper Mississippi River System.  A research framework submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program from the U.S. Geological Survey, LTRM-2019R2. 56 pp. with appendix.

Abstract

The goal of this research framework is to outline research that would continue to improve our understanding of ecological resilience of the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) and inform management of the system for health and resilience. We provide a broad overview of recently completed and ongoing work that has been funded as a part of the UMRS Ecological Resilience Assessment and related efforts to provide context for how proposed research questions build upon our current knowledge and may inform restoration planning and design. We describe two primary objectives within this research framework - the first objective is to investigate hypothesized drivers and feedbacks related to specified resilience, and the second is to expand our utility of general resilience indicators through further development and evaluation. The intended audience for this framework is the Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program (UMRR). The UMRR partnership is made up of natural resource agencies from five states (Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin) and five federal agencies (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, and USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service).

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