In March 2009, a new basin joined the HELP Network: The Iowa-Cedar Rivers basin located in east central Iowa (U.S.A.).  The basin has ample significance for our nation’s waters.  For example, in the last decades, rivers and streams in this basin have produced record floods while becoming primary contributors of nitrogen and phosphorus in the Upper Mississippi River Basin and contributing to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Iowa-Cedar Rivers basin is the first HELP project in the Midwest and is focused on the adoption of Ecohydrologic Observatories (developed by scientific communities) to support a meaningful implementation of Integrated Water Resources Management (an increasingly promoted strategy among in water-related agencies).

The newly formed HELP basin organized its first activity: a Capacity Building and Training Workshop.  The one-and-half day workshop was held on The University of Iowa campus September 28-29, 2009.  The workshop included a capacity building track, whereby agency representatives discussed strategies to advance interagency partnership in the basin and started to define an agenda of common action.  The second track was of a more practical/technical nature and provided participants with hands-on experience setting water data services using advanced data warehousing technologies.  The technical track was offered by the Consortium of Advancement of Hydrologic Science Inc-Hydrologic Information System (CUAHSI-HIS) national project team funded by the National Science Foundation.  The CUAHSI-HIS project is the flagship of the new generation of water data services system in the nation and serves the needs for both watershed science and management. Overall, 73 participants (44, 24, and 5 for track I, II, and invited speakers, respectively) from 18 agencies federal, state, local, NGO’s and universities attended the workshop.
Presentations in the capacity building track focused on the current efforts by the scientific communities to develop information systems in water-related scientific domain and showcased local efforts in building goal-focused, multi-agency collaborative projects.  Discussions were aimed at refining the HELP basin project role and scope and identifying the key areas of critical need for improving the current activity in the basin.  The proposed initial focal topic for the HELP basin is Systemic Flood Damage Reduction.

This was selected based on the fresh memory of the historical 1993 and 2008 flood crises in the basin and that there is a great need to achieve immediate tangible and practical improvements for flood mitigation in the Iowa basins by integrating current flood-related efforts.  Floods will be addressed using a systems approach whereby structural and non-structural flood control and floodplain management strategies are considered to address upland and stream-bank erosion, nutrient and sediment transport, and protection of habitat in the context of increasing social and economic value of Iowa watersheds.  A consensus was reached on the need to develop a Watershed Data and Information System both for the practical scope of integrating data from all partners into one common platform, and as an initial tangible step of a genuine collaboration.  Break-out group discussions synthesized partners’ priorities in the basin and suggestions for developmental strategy and project management.