Developing and Maintaining a Long Term Monitoring Program on the Upper Mississippi River System

In 1986, Congress authorized the Environmental Management Program (EMP) on the Upper Mississippi River System through the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA).  This Program funds two major components: ecosystem rehabilitation projects and long term resource monitoring.  The Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP) component of EMP has become one of the world’s most comprehensive river monitoring programs.  The LTRMP is implemented by the U.S. Geological Survey in partnership with the Corps and state agencies.  Data collected include water quality, vegetation, invertebrates, fish, land cover, elevation, and bathymetry.  All data are publicly available at the LTRMP website (http://www.umesc.usgs.gov/ltrmp.html).  The Program has transitioned from its initial phase of developing a data collection system and ecological database to a second phase of using those data for increased understanding of river function, developing indicators of ecosystem health, and evaluating management success.  A Strategic and Operational Plan developed by the LTRMP partnership for 2010-2014 calls for continued monitoring, but with expanded emphasis on research, modeling, communication, and adaptive management.  Issues critical to maintaining and expanding the capabilities of the LTRMP include the degree of emphasis on observational data versus research on cause-effect relations, and the ability to apply information from the relatively large spatial scale of LTRMP monitoring to the smaller spatial scale of most river rehabilitation projects.