clude changing the length of navigation seasons, changing patterns of irrigation water withdrawals, changing elevations of navigation pools, and constructing notches in flood-control levees.

This committee studied carefully the history of efforts to create coordinated management schemes for the Missouri River basin through federal river authorities modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), through interstate compacts, and through an entity composed of federal, state, and tribal representatives. In general, the proposed organizations lacked the necessary political support to achieve agreement on implementation and have thereby been unable to resolve most intra-basin conflicts. The lack of such a management authority in the Missouri River basin has created a management vacuum that has been filled by the Corps and increasingly by the courts (Thorson, 1994). If adaptive management is chosen as a paradigm by which to coordinate Missouri River management organizations and policies, it must be considered and implemented in the context of these current and historical organizational efforts. It would require Congress, federal and state agencies, Indian tribes, and other public and private stake-holders to forge an agreement placing adaptive management at the center of a process for reaching compromises on the full array of river management issues.

This committee addressed its charge against a backdrop of over a century of actions devoted to developing and managing the Missouri River for economic and social ends. Before evaluating contemporary Missouri River management issues, a review of the historical development of the Missouri River and its floodplain is appropriate.