IIHR- Hydroscience & Engineering
College of Engineering, The University of Iowa
 

 Lucille A. Carver Mississippi Riverside Environmental Research Station

(LACMRERS)
 
The Upper Mississippi River – A National Treasure
     The Mississippi River has always been described in superlatives.  This 2,350-mile-long “Father of Waters,” which drains over 1.2 million square miles, provides a home to over 400 wildlife species.  Even while shaping the evolution of America’s history, culture, and economy, this nationally significant artery has yielded services on a massive scale.  In the 1800s, the river carried entire forests of white pine logs downstream to lumber-hungry settlements.  About the same time, dozens of shell button-making plants dredged tens of thousands of pounds of mussels from the river’s bottom.  Today the river continues to transport well over a million metric tons of cargo annually, constituting a principal link between Midwestern farms and international grain markets.

 

     These uses have spawned economic gains and ecological costs. For example, species of native mussels that survived the button industry are now being smothered by exotic zebra mussels, small but prolific bivalves introduced to Midwestern waters in the ballast of transatlantic ships. Sediments washed from agricultural land are clogging the river’s backwaters and destroying fish spawning grounds. And agricultural runoff from the Corn Belt has contributed dramatically to an oxygen-poor “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. All these problems are diminishing the river basin’s natural biodiversity and health.

     When such problems saturate such a massive drainage basin, solutions need to extend beyond the norm. Any single investigator, any single discipline can view only one facet of complex dilemmas. Hence the conception of LACMRERS: the Lucille A. Carver Mississippi Riverside Environmental Research Station, a new field station near Muscatine, Iowa, operated by The University of Iowa, College of Engineering’s IIHR – Hydroscience & Engineering.


Aerial Photo of the Mississippi River Near Muscatine, Iowa , Pool 16

     LACMRERS provides a location where physical and biological scientists come together to examine the multifaceted problems that plague the Upper Mississippi River (UMR): the river’s stretch from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Cairo, Illinois. Here, in 7,500 square-foot facility funded largely by the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust, hydraulic engineers and fluid mechanicians study the river’s flow with biologists, geologists, environmental engineers, and representatives of other relevant disciplines to research comprehensive, unbiased, practical solutions to daunting problems. Together, they consider such problems as  how to nurture native species and discourage the proliferation of harmful exotic invaders. Hydraulic engineers help biologists reconstruct native fish habitat by developing computer-based numerical models of water flow around islands and structures, bed roughness, temperature gradients, etc.  And they collect critical data on sediment and nutrient levels throughout the drainage basin, and feed this data into predictive models of ecosystem response.

     The station also serves as a training center. This function was initiated in May 2002, when a three-week, field-based, hands-on water quality course was taught at the LACMRERS site. This program has become an annual event.

 

 

 
Simulated Pathlines and Flow Velocities in a Reach of Pool 16
 

Current Activities
     LACMRERS researchers are currently collecting data to quantify the ecological health of the UMR system. For example, a comprehensive survey of Navigation Pool 16, including bathymetry, was recently completed to serve as a reference for the current condition of the pool. This information has been used to develop a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model, which is capable of simulating flow in Pool 16 for different hydraulic conditions.
 

 

Sample 3D Presentation of Measured River Bathymetry in Pool 16

      One use of Pool 16 CFD models is to assess the condition of mussel habitats. Multiple factors influence the locations of mussel beds in large river channels. Mussels are filter feeders, requiring constant low velocity flows over stable substrates (sand, gravel, and cobbles). Because of IIHR’s strength in basic and applied fluid mechanics, its researchers are focusing on measuring and evaluating detailed full-scale flow and river-bed characteristics surrounding fish and mussel habitats, aquatic plants, and sediment and nutrient levels in the UMR drainage basin. This field information will be coupled with predictive models of large-river ecosystem responses.

     LACMRERS' researchers are particularly interested in obtaining field data on bed shear-stress distributions around mussel beds to further validate the CFD model and to provide basic data for biologists developing habitat suitability indices for mussels. One important, historical mussel bed is located in Pool 16 near Buffalo, Iowa, where a substantial number of adult and juvenile mussels, including the endangered Higgins Eye mussel (Lampsilis higginsi), were discovered in October 2003. This discover led to recent attempts to bolster this small population of Higgins Eye through the release of more mollusks in 2007 (Higgins Eye press release).

      Researchers at LACMRERS work in collaboration with representatives from a variety of organizations, including the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ Fairport Fish Hatchery, US Fish and Wildlife Service, USGS's Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and The Nature Conservancy, to name a few.

Future Plans
     IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering was recently awarded a major grant from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust for capacity building at LACMRERS.  Funds will be used to support a new Environmental – Hydrologic Observatory on Navigation Pool 16 of the Upper Mississippi River Basin.  High-tech sensors and state-of-the-art communication technologies will monitor and transmit data, reflecting a variety of water quality parameters, to researchers at IIHR and the research station. This initiative represents an unprecedented effort to monitor geospatial and temporal changes in a large river in response to climatic events, agricultural trends, and other anthropogenic activities in real time. The observatory also raises the bar of river science and watershed education as students play a key role in its design and implementation. Results from this project and future studies will significantly improve scientific understanding of the biogeochemical processes vital to large river ecological sustainability and directly impact the work of the many federal and mission agencies striving to improve our nation’s water resources. The observatory will also further elevate LACMRERS as a leading national and international center for Mississippi and large river education and research.

LACMRERS' Mission

•      Provide regional educational, industrial, and governmental entities with opportunities to develop and conduct field-based programs, short courses and workshops;

•      Provide a venue and state-of-the-art facilities for multi-disciplinary instruction, training, and research on large-river ecosystems;

•      Establish partnerships with government, industry, universities, and private organizations to enhance our understanding of large-river ecosystems;

•      Coordinate river-monitoring activities for the Upper Mississippi River and facilitate the public dissemination of river data; and

•      Apply IIHR’s established strengths and expertise in hydraulics, computational fluid dynamics, and remote-sensing to foster a greater understanding of aquatic ecology and to partner with researchers in agriculture, fisheries, ecology, urban and regional planning, and other disciplines.

For further information about LACMRERS, contact:

Doug Schnoebelen
LACMRERS
3388 Highway 22
Muscatine, Iowa 52761-8307
Tel: 563-288-2888
Fax: 563-288-2889
e-mail: douglas-schnoebelen@uiowa.edu
URL: http://www.iihr.uiowa.edu

 

or

 

Larry J. Weber, Director

IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering

University of Iowa

100 C. Maxwell Stanley Hydraulics Laboratory

Iowa City, IA 52242

Tel: 319 335-5597

Fax: 319 335-5238

e-mail: larry-weber@uiowa.edu

 


Releasing Higgins Eye Mussels at LACMRERS

MRERS Ground Breaking
LACMRERS Progress
IIHR Advisory Board
Driving Instructions & Maps

News-briefs
 Impact Iowa (10.3 MB)
Introduction to LACMRERS (26 MB)
Jerry Schnoor (33.8 MB)

Please send comments to: webmaster@iihr.uiowa.edu
Contact us at: iihr@uiowa.edu or call 319-335-5237
    Copyright © The University of Iowa 2005. All rights reserved. Iowa City, IA 52242 
This page was last updated on August 5th, 2008