The Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP), a component of the Environmental Management Program for the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS), is funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and administered by the U.S. Geological Survey's Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (Center) in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The LTRMP supports six field stations operated by state agencies in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin ( Figure 1) to collect most of the monitoring data. Data on important ecosystem components, including water quality, vegetation, macroinvertebrates, and fish, are obtained using standardized operating procedures. Monitoring activities focus primarily on six study areas: Navigation...
This report describes an electronic database containing 474 annotated citations that are relevant to fish passage through dams in large temperate floodplain rivers. Our goal was to survey the literature to help define the potential ecological consequences of restricted fish passage through dams in the Upper Mississippi River System and to identify alternative engineering solutions for increasing fish passage in large temperate floodplain rivers. Consequently, topic coverage is broad, including theoretical concepts in large river ecology, engineering design of fish passage structures, ecological responses to river impoundment, fish swimming performance, and relations between freshwater mussels and fish.
We investigated differences in adult and young-of-the-year (YOY) fishes within each of the six Long Term Resource Monitoring Program study areas, using monitoring data from 1993 to 2001. Our objective was to investigate the relative roles of seasonal, annual, in situ, and physical habitat factors in explaining assemblage structure patterns within the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program study areas. Adult and YOY assemblage structure within each reach was dominated by one to three numerically abundant species. The percent of the total abundance for which these species accounted was 10–88% and varied among age classes and study areas. Physical habitat classes were only weakly associated with differences in fish...
Environmental monitoring programs are frequently designed to track changes in key physical, chemical, and biological features of an ecosystem. As such, these programs provide critical information for detecting changes in system state, investigating ecological relations, and making resource management decisions. However, monitoring programs require significant investments of time, money, and human resources to implement and maintain. Periodic evaluations are necessary to assess whether the sampling design adequately addresses program goals and objectives, and whether adequate and useful information can continue to be provided for changing management and science needs. We evaluated the Long Term Resource Monitoring...
The Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP), a component of the Environmental Management Program for the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS), is administered by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The LTRMP supports six field stations operated by state agencies in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin (Figure 1) to collect most of the monitoring data. Information on important ecosystem components, including water quality, fish, vegetation, and macroinvertebrates are obtained annually using standardized procedures. Other data such as land cover/land use and bathymetry are gathered and analyzed periodically. Monitoring activities...
This report summarizes monitoring activities of the Long Term Resources Monitoring Program (LTRMP) during 2002 and highlights selected results and accomplishments pertaining to hydrology, sedimentation, bathymetry, land cover/land use, water quality, fish, vegetation, and macroinvertebrates.�
The Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP), a component of the Environmental Management Program for the Upper Mississippi River System, is administered by the U.S. Geological Survey's Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The LTRMP supports six field stations operated by state agencies in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin ( Figure 1) to collect most of the monitoring data. Data on important ecosystem components, including water quality, vegetation, macroinvertebrates, and fish, are obtained using standardized operating procedures. Monitoring activities focus primarily on six study areas: Navigation Pools 4, 8, 13, and 26 and Open River on the Mississippi...
Variation in community composition (presence/absence data) and structure (relative abundance) of Upper Mississippi River fishes was assessed using data from the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program collected from 1994 to 2002. Community composition of fishes varied more in space than through time. We found substantial variation in community composition across two spatial scales: large-scale differences between upper and lower river reaches and small-scale differences among individual regional trend areas (RTA). Community structure (relative abundance data) of fishes also varied more through space than through time. We found substantial variation in fish community structure at three spatial scales: (1) large-scale...