A Decade Of Monitoring On Pool 26 Of The Upper Mississippi River System

Author : Steve Gutreuter
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 78 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (227 download)

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Download or read book Fish Monitoring by the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program on the Upper Mississippi River System--1990-1994 written by Steve Gutreuter and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP) of the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) conducts highly standardized monitoring of fishes in Pools 4, 8,13, and 26, in a segment of the unimpounded Mississippi River, and in the La Grange Pool of the Illinois River. This report summarizes the initial 5 years of fish monitoring by the LTRMP. This report documents temporal variability that will be critical to interpretation of future events and trends (consistent temporal changes), and documents important spatial patterns. Because 5 years of data can only provide tenuous trend information and because the LTRMP sampling design was changed between 1992 and 1993, trends reported herein must be interpreted cautiously. No evidence of reduction of fish species richness (number of species) was found from 1990 through 1994 or since recording began in the late 19th century. The abundance of common carp (Cyprinus carpio), an exotic but commercially harvested species, and sauger (Stizostedion canadense), a recreationally valuable species, increased dramatically from 1990 through 1994. Few species declined in abundance. Spatial patterns in the abundance of certain species, including bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus), largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), white crappie (Pomoxis annularis), and black crappie (Pomoxis nigromaculatus) provide substantial evidence that the availability of backwaters presently limits the abundance of these species in the open river study reach, to a lesser extent in Pool 26, and probably elsewhere. This information could be instrumental in identifying the effects of present river management practices and predicting some biological and economic consequences of future changes in floodplain composition. No evidence was found that the relatively rare lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens), shovelnose sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus platorynchus), paddlefish (Polyodon spathula), and blue sucker (Cycleptus elongatus) declined in abundance from 1990 through 1994. The flood of 1993 provided an opportunity for skipjack herring (Alosa chrysochloris) to temporarily reenter the uppermost pools of the Mississippi River.