The Missouri River Ecosystem Exploring the Prospects for Recovery (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-10
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There have also been substantial reductions in the daily and annual variability of hydrologic and geomorphic processes. Causes of these changes include the removal of snags from the river in the late 1 800s; introduction of nonnative fish species beginning in the late 1800s; navigation enhancement beginning in the early 1900s; and damming and flow regulation of the mainstem Missouri River beginning in the 1930s.
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Given the size and complexity of the Missouri River ecosystem, it is not clear where the point of irreparable environmental change lies, or how close the Missouri River ecosystem might be to passing that point. However, the following changes in the Missouri River ecosystem jeopardize its fundamental natural processes: the loss of natural flood pulses; the loss of natural low flows; straightening of stream meanders and the elimination of cutand-fi~l alluviation; losses of natural riparian vegetation; reductions in water temperature variation; introduction of nonnative species; and extensive bank stabilization and stream channelization.
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Degradation of the Missouri River ecosystem will continue unless some portion of the hydrologic and geomorphic processes that sustained the preregulation Missouri River and floodplain ecosystem are restored including flow pulses that emulate the natural hydrograph, and cut-and-fill
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Without this fundamental information, cast within a system-wide perspective encompassing the entire Missouri River ecosystem, truly comprehensive assessments of the ecological state of the Missouri River are not possible. The most significant scientific unknowns in the Missouri River ecosystem are how the ecosystem will respond to management actions designed to improve ecological conditions.
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. that could promote an adaptive management approach to Missouri River and floodplain ecosystem management." Adaptive management recognizes that scientific uncertainties and unforeseen environmental changes are inevitable.
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The sum of these efforts is insufficient to noticeably recover ecological communities and fundamental physical processes in the Missouri River ecosystem. To substantially improve the ecosystem, a more systematic and better-coordinated approach that considers ecological conditions on par with other management goals in the entire Missouri River system will be required.
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The case for retaining some navigation might be stronger if navigation were discontinued or less fully supported in those segments where it is economically inefficient. Congress should give the Corps of Engineers authority to provide navigation services on an incremental basis along the channelized portion of the Missouri River, to be exercised on the basis of analysis and stakeholder input.
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Barriers to resolving this policy gridlock on the Missouri River include a lack of clearly stated, consensus-based, measurable management objectives, powerful stakeholders' expectations of a steady delivery of entitlements, and sharply differing opinions and perspectives among some Missouri River basin states. Current management protocols for operating the Missouri River system represent an accretion of federal laws, congressional committee language, appropriations instructions, and organizational interpretations that have been enacted or developed over the past century.
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Specific Missouri River adaptive management experiments and activities involving a broad spectrum of river system stakeholders in a collaborative process to establish goals and guidelines for such experiments should be implemented as soon as possible. Adaptive management actions for improving ecological conditions should be examined and conducted within a systems framework that considers the entire Missouri River ecosystem from headwaters to mouth, as well as the effects of tributary streams on the mainstem.
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To ensure support of the adaptive management program and management actions that balance contemporary social, economic, and environmental needs in the Missouri basin, Congress shouici enact a fecleral Missouri River Protection and Recovery Act clesigneci to improve ecological conclitions in the Missouri River ecosystem. This act shouici inclucle a requirement for periodic, inclepenclent review of progress toward implementing adaptive management of the Missouri River ecosystem.
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