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Fact Sheet: Development of Landscape Models for Conservation of Freshwater Mussels in the Upper Mississippi River Basin
Freshwater
mussels are the largest group of federally listed endangered or threatened
invertebrates, and their declines may signal declining riverine health.
They are a renewable resource, providing significant ecological and economic
benefits to the Nation. Mussels are a food resource for many animals;
they improve water quality by filtering contaminants, sediments, and nutrients;
and the shells of some species are used in the production of cultured
pearls. Because of their complex life history, which includes a larval
stage that requires a fish, traditional management approaches are not
effective in conserving freshwater mussels. Although numerous threats
have been suggested as contributing to their decline, past efforts have
not been sufficient to identify which threats are responsible for the
decline. Such information is needed to identify management approaches
to sustain this resource.
Because
freshwater mussels are declining nationwide, it is important to understand
the factors contributing to their distribution and abundance. Attempts
to predict their distribution from readily available habitat descriptors,
such as sediment grain size or flow, have largely failed when tested critically.
This suggests that traditional measures of riverine habitats appear to
be poor descriptors of community structure. Consequently, additional variables
not often used in biological studies should be considered at a variety
of spatial scales, from small to much larger areas. Our goal is to provide
for an integrated, ecological, and proactive approach to management of
freshwater mussels by placing them in the context of other landscape,
biological, and sociological components. Much of the prior work on mussels
has been conducted by teams of mussel specialists on small streams and
by measuring variables typically associated with biological studies (i.e.,
flow, temperature, sediment features). The assembled team of scientists
working on our project includes biologists, mussel specialists, hydrologists,
modelers, acoustic ecologists, and landscape ecologists. Future work on
freshwater mussels needs to take a larger-scale approach to allow managers
and scientists to use a variety of approaches across a broad geographic
area.
Our
study uses a landscape-level approach to assess whether the distribution
of mussels can be predicted from a variety of features in the surrounding
landscape. These features will likely differ depending on the scale of
the analyses, but may include the following: distribution of host fishes,
hydrologic measurements in the river bed, land-use and land-cover in the
surrounding area, and proximity to the main navigation channel. The objectives
of our study are as follows:
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Analyses at other scales (watersheds and tributaries) may be needed because certain features of the landscape may only be important in structuring mussel communities at a given scale. Thus, we will initiate analyses at other scales in later years. |
The
conservation of freshwater mussels is a management priority of the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. Region 3 of the
Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, is relying on relocation of the
endangered Higgins Eye Pearly Mussel in the Upper Mississippi River to
help recover this species as a result of the invasion of the zebra mussel.
Relocation of freshwater mussels is a risky conservation strategy, yet
the Service has few other options. The approach used in our study may
provide the Service and other management agencies with additional tools
to help conserve imperiled species. In addition, this research supports
the goals of the joint Federal and State "National Strategy for the
Conservation of Native Freshwater Mussels" drafted by biologists
in the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and
many states in the eastern United States, including Minnesota and Wisconsin.
The study completion is scheduled for 2005.
Principal Investigator: Teresa Newton
Research Team: Michelle Bartsch, Steve Gutreuter, Robert Kennedy, Melinda Knutson, Ken Lubinski, Jennifer Sauer, Jeff Steuer, and Steve Zigler
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://www.umesc.usgs.gov/aquatic/native_mussels/5004455.html
Page Contact Information: Contacting the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
Page Last Modified:
October 2, 2007
Develop
a Geographic Information System framework to explore the relation
between the distribution of mussels in the Upper Mississippi River
Basin and a series of physical and biological variables, measured
across a broad geographic area.
