Monitoring and Science
Advancing knowledge for restoring and maintaining a healthier and more resilient Upper Mississippi River Ecosystem
The Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) Program integrates long term monitoring, research, modeling, and data management to provide critical knowledge about the Upper Mississippi River’s health and resilience. This provides a solid foundation upon which to base management actions, habitat restoration, and policy. With long term data collected over more than 25 years, the UMRR’s database is one of the most extensive and comprehensive on any large river system in the world. UMRR’s scientific expertise, breadth of information, monitoring protocols, modeling capabilities, data management, and dissemination infrastructure creates extensive possibilities to learn about the river’s natural functions and processes, human influences, and opportunities to best address critical restoration needs.
The science, monitoring, and research conducted by UMRR has two equally important focus areas:
Long Term Resource Monitoring
Assess, and detect changes in, the fundamental health and resilience of the Upper Mississippi River ecosystem by continuing to monitor and evaluate its key ecological components of aquatic vegetation, bathymetry, fish, land use/ land cover, and water quality.
Science in Support of Restoration and Management
Provide critical insights and understanding regarding a range of key ecological questions through a combination of monitoring, additional research, and modeling in order to inform and improve management and restoration of the Upper Mississippi River ecosystem.