Can Resilience Concepts Improve Management and Restoration? a Resilience Assessment of the Upper Mississippi River System

Dynamic river-floodplain systems are able to maintain their function and structure in the face of natural disturbances. As anthropogenic pressures accumulate, the capacity of these ecosystems to absorb disturbances and maintain their structure and function may decline. There is an interest in operationalizing resilience concepts in natural resource management to better define boundaries of safe operating spaces within which valued ecosystem services are maintained, but large-scale assessments of ecological resilience are rare. To further develop resilience concepts in relation to river restoration, we are assessing the ecological resilience of the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS).  We have been working with federal and state partners to identify the valued services provided by the UMRS, determine the critical controlling variables, and better understand the qualitative and quantitative relationships among these controlling variables and the valued aspects of the ecosystem using long-term ecological data. Further, we have assessed broader attributes of the system that may contribute to or inhibit its general resilience and ability to persist in its current state despite a range of natural and anthropogenic disturbances. We will share our experience regarding the utility of this approach for better understanding, managing, and restoring a large river ecosystem.