Characterizing Climate-Driven Changes to Flood Events and Floodplain Forests in the Upper Mississippi River to Inform Management

Floodplain forests along the Upper Mississippi River are heavily managed but understudied systems that provide critical ecosystem services, including habitat for endangered species. Impacts of a changing climate, such as warmer winters and wetter summers with extreme precipitation events, are already influencing hydrologic patterns in these ecosystems, including altering the duration, frequency, and timing of floods. These changes bring numerous challenges to floodplain forest managers. This project will leverage an already established research-management partnership to develop knowledge and tools to inform sustainable decision making. In this project, researchers will utilize multiple sources of “big data” to explore and quantify [...]