Conserving Minnesota’s native mussel legacy: Quantifying habitat interactions

To quantify the responses of native mussel to the range of environmental conditions in the Minnesota River and St. Croix River basins, laboratory experiments will examine the physiological responses of mussels to different levels of suspended sediment and bed instability over a range of flow rates. Experiments will be conducted in the Outdoor StreamLab and flumes at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota. The experimental streams allow for direct manipulation of environmental conditions in a field-scale channel while collecting laboratory quality measurements. Laboratory experiments will focus on mussel response to suspended sediment (water quality) and bed instability (increased flows or siltation). We received [...]