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Monitoring and research strategies of the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program require a current, objective understanding of the factors that control ecological structure and function of floodplain reaches within the Upper Mississippi River System. The conceptual model presented here is designed to fill part of this need by listing major factors (abiotic and biotic) and disturbances (natural and human-induced) that operate at each of five spatial scales. In decreasing order of size, the spatial scales include: basin, stream network, floodplain reach, navigation pool, and habitat. Major factors are defined as those which act to keep ecosystem variables within predictable limits over a reference time period. A disturbance...
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Evaluations of Long Term Resource Monitoring Program sampling designs for water quality, fish, aquatic vegetation, and macroinvertebrates were initiated in 1999 by analyzing data collected since 1992 in six trend analysis areas. Initial emphasis was placed on evaluating statistical power to detect change from one year or sampling interval to the next, and on determining what spatial, methodological, or target variable redundancies existed in the data sets. Power to detect change was evaluated at halved, present, and doubled levels of effort. Power to detect change for different variables varied widely and was greatly influenced by sample size and for species by their frequency of occurrence. Power for detecting...
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This manual describes why, how, when, and where data are collected under the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program for the Upper Mississippi River System
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Fishes are one of the most diverse and abundant natural resources of the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) (Carlander 1954; Rasmussen 1979; Van Vooren 1983; Fremling et al. 1989). Several features contribute to the great amount of interest fishes receive from the general public, fishery managers, and aquatic ecologists: a. UMRS fishes support multimillion-dollar commercial and sport fisheries. b. Fishes respond to a variety of hydrologic, water quality, and habitat variables. c. Scientists and fishery managers recognize fish communities as an integrative index to a complex set of physical and biological conditions on the UMRS; that is, fish are indicators of the biotic integrity of the UMRS. In addition, impacts...
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Habitat rehabilitation is one of several alternatives available to a river management agency. Costs to rehabilitate even small areas of a system as large and complex as the Upper Mississippi River (UMR) are high. During the course of planning and implementing rehabilitation projects, certain pieces of critical information need to be identified and accessed. Items of information fall into four categories: system objectives and action levels, system status, causal factors, and evaluations of management alternatives. We use examples from the environmental and management history of the UMR to demonstrate the roles of these pieces of information in the management process and especially how they relate to decision making...
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