ADVANCING RESTORATION SCIENCE ON THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

Kenneth S. Lubinski

U. S. Geological Survey, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, La 
Crosse, WI 54603

The Water Resources Development Act of 2007 has set the stage for dramatic 
acceleration and expansion of ecosystem restoration activities on the Upper 
Mississippi River.  Whereas the Environmental Management Program (EMP) 
established in 1986 initially called for a 10-year program of restoration and 
monitoring at an annual level of $19 million, the new Navigation and 
Ecosystem Sustainability Program (NESP) may, pending full appropriations, 
lead to the expenditure of $1.58 billion for ecosystem restoration activities 
over the program’s first 15 years.  New areas of work permitted under NESP 
include fish passage structures at dams, and 35,000 acres of floodplain 
restoration.  Restoration work completed under the EMP answered many 
questions about habitat project design, but the expected increase in 
restoration scope and activity under NESP demands a similar increase in our 
commitment to program accountability.   The need to objectively and 
quantitatively document progress toward river ecosystem goals provides 
numerous opportunities to advance river restoration science.  Of the many 
complex questions that must be addressed, two stand out: 1) how much 
restoration is enough? and 2) how should the program’s successes be measured 
and communicated?  Science can’t provide the full answers to these questions, 
but it must play a role in the generating the evidence needed to explore 
them.  A Science Panel, convened to provide suggestions to the NESP partners 
for implementing an adaptive management approach, has begun bridging gaps 
that exist between such academic concepts of ecosystem sustainability, 
health, structure, function, and their operational equivalents.  Of great 
importance is the need to link modifications to physical and hydraulic river 
attributes with all of their ecological consequences, and site or project 
measures to reach and systemic scales.  In addition to management objectives, 
the commitment to an adaptive approach will require the establishment of 
learning objectives, which in turn will allow more restoration projects to 
function as experiments, and which will guide monitoring activities and the 
development of predictive models.  Standing in the way of these potential 
advances however, is the long-standing criticism by many managers that the 
costs of restoration science would be better spent on more projects.  
Polarization on this issue may be increasing, and the NESP partners must find 
a way to integrate science (learning) and management (restoration actions) to 
assure they will complement and support each other rather than being seen as 
competing program elements.   

Keywords:  Upper Mississippi River, adaptive management, restoration science, 
Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability Program