Minnesota Water Resources Conference - Water Resources Center ...

BOOK OF ABSTRACTS
Tuesday, October 28
Concurrent Sessions VI 3:00–4:30
Track D: Flood Reduction and Riverine Habitat, continued
Home on the Big River: Great River Habitat Quality Indices
Debra Taylor, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, taylor.debra@epa.gov; Mark Pearson, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency; Theodore Angradi, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; David Bolgrien, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency;
Brian Hill, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Terri Jicha, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and Mary Moffett, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. EPA’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program sampled the Upper Mississippi, Missouri
and Ohio Rivers from 2004 through 2006 as part of an integrated assessment of ecological condition. We
developed site-scale fish habitat indices by dividing the components of habitat into four categories: Channel
complexity, substrate, littoral structures, and human impacts. Once site-scale indices were established,
we evaluated if landscape-scale land use and cover metrics could improve the site-scale indices. On the
Impounded reaches of the Mississippi, channel complexity, substrate, and landscape-scale measures of forest,
shrub, and grass cover explained 49 percent of the variation in the fish community. On the Lower Missouri
and the unimpounded reaches the Mississippi downriver from the Mississippi/Missouri confluence, the fish
community was related to channel complexity, substrate, and the proportions of shrub land cover, grassland,
and pasture. Fish communities on the Ohio River were correlated with distance to nearest upriver dam,
substrate, and the proportions of land cover in shrubs and grasslands.
83 Minnesota Water Resources Conference, October 27–28, 2008