Controversy and science at the meeting of great rivers

Sparks, Richard E.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/94737 Copy

Description

Title

Controversy and science at the meeting of great rivers

Author(s)

Sparks, Richard E.

Contributor(s)

• Sparks, Ruth M.
• Pfeifer, Jane

Issue Date

2016-07

Keyword(s)

• Environmental policy
• environmental history
• environmental monitoring
• environmental impacts
• nature conservation
• river ecology
• conservation of natural resources
• navigation locks and dams
• river engineering
• water quality
• habitat quality
• outdoor recreation
• floods
• floodplains
• levees
• Mississippi River
• Illinois River
• U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
• U.S. Geological Survey
• Illinois Natural History Survey
• Illinois State Water Survey
• Illinois Geological Survey
• Western Illinois University
• Principia College
• National Science Foundation
• National Great Rivers Research and Education Center
• Lewis and Clark Community College
• University of Illinois

Geographic Coverage

The Illinois River and the Upper Mississippi River, from Minnesota to the confluence with the Ohio River.

Abstract

The confluence of the Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi rivers near St. Louis is a National Scenic Byway and a place where commerce and conservation clashed over the future of the rivers and where science improved the understanding and management of the rivers. In the 1970s, commercial navigation interests wanted new locks constructed that would accommodate larger barge tows. Conservationists argued that the increased traffic would disturb fish and wildlife and damage their habitats. Congress reached historic compromises in 1978 and in 1986 that approved construction of one new dam and two locks at Alton, Illinois on the Mississippi River and established a long-term monitoring program that tracks trends in fish and wildlife populations and their habitats on the entire Upper Mississippi River, from Minnesota downstream to Illinois and Missouri. The compromises also included a habitat rehabilitation and enhancement program. Together, the habitat rehabilitation and the monitoring programs have improved the understanding and management of not only the Mississippi and Illinois rivers (the latter is included in these programs), but of other large floodplain-rivers around the world. A separate Long Term Ecological Research program on the two rivers, funded by the National Science Foundation from 1981 to 1987, contributed to an understanding of the role of disturbances (e.g., floods) in maintaining species diversity and natural processes, summarized in a much-cited paper, The Floodpulse Concept in River-Floodplain Systems (Junk, Bayley and Sparks, 1989, Canadian Special Publication of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 106). The confluence area was hard hit in the Great Midwestern Flood of 1993, but one positive outcome was a report commissioned by the Clinton administration: Sharing the Challenge: Floodplain Management into the 21st Century (http://fas.org/irp/agency/dhs/fema/sharing.pdf). The report reaffirmed findings and recommendations emerging from the on-going monitoring and habitat rehabilitation projects: that improvement and recovery of the environmental and recreational values of rivers and their floodplains is congruent with reduction of future flood damages to human infrastructure. The confluence area has played a historic role in the development of river science and management.

Publisher

Historic Elsah Foundation, Elsah, Illinois

Series/Report Name or Number

Elsah History, Numbers 109 and 110

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/94737

Sponsor(s)/Grant Number(s)

N/A

Copyright and License Information

Historic Elsah Foundation grants the right to the author, Richard Sparks, to make the published version of his article, Controversy and Science at the Meeting of Great Rivers, publicly available on the web for viewing and download. This permission also extends to his representatives and/or descendants. 21 April 2016

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