The point at which three rivers—the Mississippi, Illinois and Missouri—come together will be the location of a new research field station. The official construction launch of the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center (NGRREC) Confluence Field Station took place on Thursday, April 17, at the National Great Rivers Museum in Alton, Illinois. The field station will serve the NGRREC partners of Lewis and Clark Community College (LCCC), the University of Illinois and the Illinois Natural History Survey, along with many other partner institutions and scientists across the country. “Research at this new facility will contribute to the body of scientific knowledge about river systems and will help inform both the public and policy makers about issues that relate to the health and sustainability of our rivers,” said Dr. Dale Chapman, chairman of the NCRREC board and president of LCCC.

The field station research will be critical to developing sound watershed and river management strategies that can have global implications in the effort to protect and sustain river systems amid exploding populations and increasing scarcity of fresh water resources.

Dr. Gary Rolfe, U of I professor emeritus and executive director of NGRREC, said that one feature that will set this facility apart is its sophisticated mesocosms—large concrete channels containing flowing water and plankton pumped directly from the river. “In these artificial environments, researchers can conduct controlled experiments by changing the water velocity or other environmental conditions. The results of these experiments can be used to predict effects on populations in the river and to develop fish conservation strategies,” said Rolfe.

The field station is scheduled for completion in 2009. Chapman described it as “a model of ‘green construction’ with minimal environmental impact, renewable energy systems and internal recycling systems.”

During the week of April 7, a delegation of engineers (CorMagdalena) responsible for navigation on the Magdalena River in Colombia, South America, visited the confluence region and participated in a series of meetings hosted by the St. Louis District of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and NGRREC assisted with the visit, arranging site visits and meetings with scientists and policy makers in the region.

The purpose of the CorMagdalena visit was to discuss issues related to river management for ecosystem health and human uses—environmental flows, flood and floodplain management, navigation, and sediment management. Presentations by USACE, TNC and NGRREC addressed the Mississippi River as a system and discussed methods of considering the competing needs dependent on the system, including balancing health/safety, economic, and conservation needs for maintaining sustainability.

Discussion focused on balancing ecosystem health with sediment management issues, navigation needs, and flood risk management. The delegation discussed using decision support tools when addressing challenges of floodplain management from transportation, flood management and conservation perspectives in light of the historical management and conservation challenges of the Mississippi River. Presenters and CorMagdalena considered the importance of maintaining natural sediment regimes along with the challenges of maintaining such regimes in a highly altered system such as the Mississippi River and the consequences of not doing so. Successful efforts to maintain sediment regimes in important areas while allowing navigation to be maintained were also a focus.

At the conclusion of the meetings, a session was provided to summarize key points from presentations and facilitate discussion of drafting a work plan to address issues identified by CorMagdalena staff. Topics included environmental flows, navigation and sediment, floodplain management, and additional topics such as protected areas, ecosystem services, monitoring, and adaptive management.

CorMagdalena, USACE, TNC and NGRREC determined it will be important to continue discussing these topics to refine the details and place them in a work plan.

Environmental Education

Upper Mississippi River Education Committee
In partnership with Prairie Rivers Network, Sierra Club and Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (SIUE), NGRREC hosted 60 high school students from Jerseyville and Southwestern High Schools at Lewis and Clark Community College on April 11. The students were divided into groups, the groups were assigned case studies, and the members worked together to generate proposed solutions. The case studies addressed sedimentation, hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico and floodplain development. Todd Strole from The Nature Conservancy, John Chick from the NGRREC field station, and Dan Steinmann from the Natural Resource Conservation Service rotated among the groups to provide advice. At last year’s high school symposium, the students from the two schools did not work well together. To address this, Jessica Pascoe led a team-building activity that was successful in breaking the ice between the two schools.

3rd Annual Wings of Spring Confluence Birding Festival
Jessica Pascoe chaired the Wings of Spring education committee this year, and she involved 80 fourth-graders from four schools in the Education Day activities on April 26. The Missouri Department of Conservation once again hosted the bird search and binocular walk activities. Dr. Elaine AbuSharbain from SIUE hosted nature journaling. Christine Favilla from the Sierra Club hosted a game called “Migration Mishaps” and also led the “Build a Bird Feeder” activity on Saturday. A total of 1,348 visitors attended Wings of Spring events this year, including 128 Girl Scouts.

2008 Water Festival
There was no shortage of water at the Sixth Annual Water Festival on Friday, May 9, but that didn’t stop 36 teachers from four counties and nearly 900 fifth graders from having fun. New exhibitors this year included the National Weather Service, Calhoun County Soil and Water Conservation District, Water CAMPWS, SIU-Edwardsville, Southwestern High School (led by former NGRREC intern Debbie Gaffney), the Illinois Natural History Survey Mobile Science Center, the Illinois Petroleum Resource Board, the Two Rivers National Wildlife Refuge, and College for Kids and The Bridge LCCC.

NGRREC scientists travel to China
By Dr. Rip Sparks

NGRREC scientists Dr. John Chick and Dr. Richard Sparks travelled to China in May at the invitation of The Nature Conservancy’s Great Rivers Program (TNC), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the Yangtze Water Resources Commission (CWRC).  “Yangtze” was the name Europeans assigned to the river--the Chinese name is actually “Changjiang”which means “Long River” in English (hence CWRC, not YWRC). They were part of an eight-member U.S. scientific team that shared experiences with Chinese river managers and scientists from two universities and a half dozen government agencies (in addition to the CWRC).  The Yangtze and other Chinese rivers were modified starting thousands of years ago, well before the U.S. was even discovered by Europeans, but the rate of contemporary river development in China is unprecedented—in support of an economy expanding so rapidly that it is expected to become the world’s largest within ten years.  Like the Mississippi, China’s rivers are working rivers, and the challenges are the same:  how to manage rivers to develop and maintain important commercial uses (hydroelectric power, water supply, navigation, floodplain agriculture, tourism) while maintaining biodiversity and other natural goods and services (such as reduction of flood peaks by wetlands and floodways).  

Dr. Chick described new evidence and new ideas about the production of plankton in rivers, a subject of great interest in China, where nuisance algal blooms have required water intakes to be shut down temporarily in some areas.  In addition, important  inland fisheries in China depend on fishes that consume plankton, including the same Asian carps that are currently invading the Mississippi River and its tributaries.  At the end of his formal presentations, Dr. Chick unpacked his violin and played a song about the Yangtze River that most of the Chinese participants knew by heart and joined in singing, thereby illustrating that in both countries rivers are part of our cultures, not just commodities.  

Constraints on river and floodplain restoration are much greater in China than in the U.S. because of the greater population density and need to grow food on virtually all arable land, including floodplains.  Approximately half the available cropland in China is in the huge floodplain of the Yangtze River, whereas less than 4% of the cropland in Illinois is in the floodplain of the Illinois River.  Despite these constraints, the Chinese are restoring floodplain lakes,  developing ways to protect people while using parts of the floodplain to convey major floods, and considering a native fish reserve upstream from the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric project.  Officials in the Ministry of Water Resources in Beijing seemed particularly interested in Dr. Sparks’ integrated analysis of the hydrological, ecological, and economic consequences of The Nature Conservancy’s Emiquon Project on the Illinois River.  The Emiquon site had once been one of the most biologically productive floodplain lakes in the entire Illinois Valley, but was drained, leveed and converted to row crop agriculture.  Now it is being restored and has the potential to generate more jobs and economic output as a center for outdoor recreation and ecotourism than the farm did.  

Both NGRREC scientists were enthusiastic about the trip, which included visits to four major cities (Shanghai, Chongqing, Wuhan and Beijing); a three-day,  300-mile boat trip on the Yangtze and a scenic tributary;  and approximately 2,500 miles of travel by air and bus within China.  “It was a life-changing experience,” reported Dr. Chick, “equivalent to the first time I heard a violin and knew that was the instrument I wanted to play.”  Dr. Sparks says, “This is not the end of one trip, but the beginning of a new relationship.  Within a year, some of the people we met will be visiting the U.S. and the Mississippi River.  The Great Rivers Center plans to continue working with The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Geological Survey and our new Chinese colleagues so together we can improve the science and practice of river management.”  

2008 Summer Intern Program
By Bill Kruidenier

Thirty students were accepted into the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center’s annual summer internship program—the largest group of interns to date.  The selection criteria includes a minimum 3.0 GPA, coursework in environmental sciences, biology or related field, and current enrollment in an accredited institution of higher learning. Students from 13 institutions in Illinois and Missouri applied this year.

The intern program began with a week-long orientation at Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey, Illinois. Following registration on Monday morning, the Program’s executive director, Dr. Gary Rolfe, welcomed the students and introduced them to the Program’s staff leaders for the week’s activities--Dr. Lyle Guyon, terrestrial ecologist, Ms. Jessica Pascoe, environmental educator, Ms. Vera Bojic, RiverWatch coordinator and Ms. Megan Dooling, field biologist.

Monday afternoon's lineup included presentations given by NGRREC staff, including an update on Dr. Richard (Rip) Sparks and Dr. John Chick's recent trip to China. Dr. Sparks and Dr. Chick were invited delegates with the United States Geological Society in partnership with The Nature Conservancy and CWRC's Yangtze Valley Water Environmental Monitoring Center. The purpose of the trip was to visit three cities along the Yangtze River, a river that has faced many management and conservation threats. The Chinese are particularly interested in learning about long term resource monitoring programs developed and used in the United States. (for more on this trip see article listed below).

Interns participated in a service project again this year by removing invasive species from the Palisades Property.  The interns were met by former landowner Scott Adams and executive director of the Great Rivers Land Trust Alley Ringhausesn. After listening to a brief history of the property and the transfer of the property to NGRREC, students were divided into three groups and escorted by Megan Dooling and Dr. Guyon to specific areas of the property where they enthusiastically adapted to the sawing and pruning techniques of removing honesuckle and pulled and bagged numerous bags of garlic mustard.

Day Four of the orientation week, interns were led on an expedition to China Creek, on the campus of Lewis and Clark Community College, by Vera Bojic. A prize was awarded to Mallory Eschbach for discovery of the most unusual item found in the creek that day. Mallory proudly displays her old tredle sewing machine shown at the left.

Dr. George Banziger, dean of Math, Science and Technology at Lewis and Clark, who serves as the academic liaison between NGRREC and Lewis and Clark, and environmental educator Jessica Pascoe, prepared students for environmental mediation by organizing them into three groups, that of; developers, environmentalists and facilitators to help prepare them for group discussons on Friday. Group presentations were led by Beth Pitrolo, Assistant Disrict Council with the St. Louis District branch of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The exercise is intended to be an interactive experience for the students to better understand perpsectives of all groups involved in environmental conflict resolution. The group disbanded at 5:00 p.m on Friday and after enjoying the Memorial Day weekend with family and friends began their emploment as summer interns on Tuesday, May 27. The group will meet again August 4 & 5 for a student symposium where they will have the opportunity to present a poster and give a PowerPoint presentation on their respective research projects.

For more information on the internship program, visit www.ngrrec.org

Schedule of Upcoming Events
For more information contact us:

National Great Rivers Research
and Education Center
5800 Godfrey Road, Godfrey, IL 62035
phone: 618- 468-4810
e-mail ngrrec@lc.edu

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June 2-5, Midwest Levees Conference
June 23-27, Nature Adventure Camp, National Great Rivers Museum, Alton, IL
July 7-11, Stream Team, Godfrey Campus, Science Building 410, Godfrey, IL
August 4-5, NGRREC Intern Symposium, Godfrey, IL
September 22-23 International Rivers Symposium, Chicago, IL