Mississippi River Water Quality and Interstate Collaboration Summary of a Workshop (2014) / Chapter Skim
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2 Workshop Topics and Presentations
2 Workshop Topics and Presentations
Pages 7-26
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From page 7... ...
programs that maintain soil productivity on fields do not necessarily improve water quality in adjacent water bodies. In 2009 the NRCS established the Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative (MRBI)
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"Edge-of-field" monitoring may be defined as monitoring conducted at the field level to determine directly whether nutrient management practices are helping remove nutrient export from the field. Priority small watersheds within the Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative were the first locations where NRCS offered voluntary cost-sharing assistance for the implementation of edge-of-field water quality monitoring to help assess the efficacy of conservation systems (Figures 2-1 and 2-2)
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Figure 2-2 One definition of the "paired watershed" approach is as follows: Bitmapped Paired watershed field Low-res studies are used to evaluate watershed scale i mpacts of conservation practices. These are field studies designed to e nable comparison of before-and-after monitoring data collected for similar watersheds in which a particular conservation practice is tested with one but not the other.
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water quality monitoring. NRCS has established protocols for evaluating conservation effectiveness through EOF water quality monitoring and in paired watershed studies.
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He also discussed the importance of data quality assurance and reporting requirements. Michele Reba of the USDA ARS office in Jonesboro, Arkansas, provided a state perspective on USDA conservation and water quality monitoring programs in Arkansas.
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. Michael Woodside of the USGS provided an overview of USGS monitoring activities in the Mississippi River basin.
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Dale Robertson of USGS provided an update on SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regression on Watershed Attributes) model and its application to the Mississippi River basin (see also USGS, 2014b)
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This represents a shift in thinking about these issues, as there was a longstanding view that phosphorus was the main cause of eutrophication in freshwater ecosystems, while nitrogen was the main problem downstream in saltwater ecosystems.3 Greg Jackson of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality presented a state perspective on monitoring for management of nutrient inputs to the Mississippi River. He described the state's nutrient reduction strategies, which include development of numeric nutrient criteria, engaging partners and stakeholders, and implementing and monitoring nutrient reduction methods.
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Joseph Pietrowski of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provided an overview of the activities of the Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force (Task Force)
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Michael Woodside of the U.S. Geological Survey described two important initiatives for water quality monitoring in the Mississippi River Basin: development of the Water Quality Portal by USGS and EPA, and the Task Force Monitoring Collaborative (for more information, see National Water Quality Monitoring Council, 20144)
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William Northey of the Iowa Department of Agriculture explained that in the past three years the Task Force has seen a greater level of engagement among the Mississippi River basin states in a variety of nutrient reduction and monitoring activities. He noted that a common framework is needed to help guide state-level water quality monitoring activities.
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CPRA interest in nutrients is in the context of ecosystem restoration, while the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality is focused on and conducts the state water quality monitoring program. The state has developed watershed implementation plans for 50 watersheds, and these are monitored at relatively fine scale.
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Water quality standards used to evaluate water quality monitoring data require consistency across states in order to arrive at consistent assessments of impaired boundary waters. There are several examples of interstate collaboration in monitoring and assessment in the Mississippi River basin.
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of the Tennessee Department of Environment 6 LTRMP is a cooperative federal-state program (five states in the Upper Mississippi River Basin) that has been collecting physical, chemical, and biological data on the Upper Mississippi River using standardized protocols since the mid-1990s.
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LMRCC has no paid staff. Louisiana is the only member of LMRCC that has continuous water quality monitoring stations along the Mississippi River.
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This monitoring effort involves multiple states and multiple government agencies, but is conducted in a coordinated manner and with consistent methods. She discussed ongoing challenges associated with interpreting the causes of trends in water quality data for nutrients and other contaminants, and that more ancillary data on environmental conditions and flows are needed to interpret trends in water quality data.
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and Maria Lemke (The Nature Conservancy) jointly discussed some of their work in the Mississippi River basin.
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Roger Wolf of the Iowa Soybean Association discussed nutrient management and water quality issues in Iowa's Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers, both of which drain into and through the city of Des Moines. He discussed activities of Agriculture's Clean Water Alliance in Iowa, and the Iowa Soybean Association.
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In regard to nutrient control, he expressed the view that it is important to focus on water management. He stated that improved water management in agricultural production will "pull the nutrients along." This second day of the workshop also featured a luncheon talk delivered by Tony Thompson of Willow Lake Farm in Windom, Minnesota, summarized in Box 2-2.
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From page 26... ...
26 MISSISSIPPI RIVER WATER QUALITY WORKSHOP SUMMARY modeling, coordination, and public engagement for improved understanding of water quality conditions in the Mississippi River basin. Discussion ensued on these topics, resulting in expansion and refinement of the committee's list of key messages and priorities, which are outlined in the following section.
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Key Terms
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