NGRREC Research Director Recognized
The research director of the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center was recognized for his contributions by The Nature Conservancy in October 2007 with the Illinois River Valley Conservation Award. 

Dr. Sparks, who has spent 34 years advancing the science and management of large rivers in Illinois and around the world, has been the NGRREC director of research since the Center's inception four years ago. Previously, he was director of the Large River Research Program at the Illinois Natural History Survey, where he oversaw research and monitoring programs on the Illinois and Upper Mississippi rivers, and then director of the Illinois Water Resources Center, located at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.  

Leslee Spraggins, the director of the Illinois Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, presented the award to Dr. Sparks in Peoria at the quarterly meeting of Lieutenant Governor Patrick Quinn's Illinois River Coordinating Council, which was held in conjunction with the 11th Biennial Governor's Conference on the Management of the Illinois River System. She said, "The Nature Conservancy would never have awakened to the importance of large river systems had it not been for Dr. Sparks. He co-authored The Flood Pulse Concept in River-Floodplain Ecosystems, a much-cited work that describes the importance of seasonal floods in maintaining the biodiversity of rivers and floodplains."

In receiving the award, Dr. Sparks said, "There has been a reversal in attitude toward rivers since I started my career. My predecessor at the Natural History Survey field station had wanted to work on the Illinois River but was told he would have to do that on his own time, because it was an industrial river for conveying waste and barges. In contrast, I was encouraged to find out how the river could recover and to publicize the findings. Now there is a comprehensive plan for restoration and hundreds of conservation and restoration projects are ongoing in the river and its watershed."

Sparks said he was especially honored to receive the award because it was named in honor of his deceased colleague, Frank Bellrose, with whom he worked for 25 years at the Natural History Survey's field station on the Illinois River at Havana.  

Recipients of The Nature Conservancy's Illinois River Valley Conservation Award demonstrate outstanding work and leadership over a sustained period. The award recognizes outstanding individual achievement in river conservation. Past recipients include Frank Bellrose (for whom the award was subsequently named), the first waterfowl biologist hired by the Illinois Natural History Survey, who became an internationally-recognized expert on bird migration and waterfowl management; Lieutenant Governor Bob Kustra, who led citizens and scientists in developing the integrated management plan for the Illinois River Watershed; William L. Rutherford, creator of the Forest Park Foundation, which added more than 20,000 acres of land for recreation and wildlife in the Peoria area; Professor Emeritus Robert Williams at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, who established environmentally based programs in schools around the state; and Congressman Ray LaHood, who was instrumental in securing federal interest and funding for river recovery.

The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. Since its founding in 1951 it has protected more than 117 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of rivers worldwide. It has more than 1 million members, and works in all 50 states and more than 30 countries.

The Ebony Jewelwing
By Dr. Pat Dailey, Lewis and Clark Community College

The Ebony Jewelwing (Calopteryx maculata) is a common damselfly of shaded streams throughout the eastern and midwestern parts of the United States. Locally this large damselfly is observed from mid to late spring and throughout the summer months. This species is easily recognized by its large size, black wings and metallic, iridescent-green body. Females are easily recognized by their blackish-brown wings with a presence of a conspicuous white, rectangular-shaped cell (pterostigma or stigma) near the upper part of the wing tip (see photograph at left) and blackish-brown wings. Males lack this white cell on their wing tips, and their wings are entirely black. Flight of these damselflies is similar to that of a slow-moving, fluttering butterfly as a consequence of the slow-beating rhythm of the wings. Ebony Jewelwings are often seen perching in small numbers on riparian vegetation (plants growing along stream banks). Males perform  “dancing”  maneuvers during courtship to attract prospective females, and they guard females during oviposition (egg-laying). Females usually lay eggs on emergent or submerged vegetation. The predatory larvae of this species can be large 25 to 35 mm. They are usually found in flowing water near submerged plant stems or leaves or the exposed roots of plants along undercut banks. Their brown color and long limbs resemble the terrestrial walkingstick, and they use this body design as camouflage to fool unsuspecting prey. Males of this species can range between 39 and 57 mm and females between 41 and 52 mm.

Rain Gardens Blossoming Across Illinois
By Jessica Pascoe

Rain gardens are being created across Illinois, including Lewis and Clark Community College, thanks to the Lieutenant Governor’s Illinois Rain Garden Initiative Grant program. The initiative includes a schoolyard project, funded by the Bureau of Fish and Wildlife, which provides $500 grants to schools and community organizations interested in planting for educational purposes.

Twelve volunteers from the college, NGRREC and Pride, Inc. helped plant the campus rain garden in July. The garden collects stormwater as it runs off from the parking lot on the southeast side of Haskell Hall. The garden features native grasses and forbs with deep root systems that absorb water and hold the soil in place. A paved sidewalk borders one edge and a slight berm is built around the garden to help collect the water. The site’s heavy clay soil was removed and replaced with layers of gravel, sand, topsoil, compost and hardwood mulch to promote better drainage. The garden, designed by the college's lead horticulturist, Julie Conley, features two native grasses—including Prairie Dropseed (along the sidewalk) and Side Oats Gramma (on the berm). The native forb species include Prairie Blazing Star, Blue Star, Goldenrod, Wild Columbine, Black-eyed Susan, Rattlesnake Master, False Indigo, Beard’s Tongue, and Lead Plant. NGRREC will offer an “Intro to Rain Gardens” Workshop on Saturday, April 19 through Lewis and Clark’s Continuing Education Department. For more information on rain gardens, visit www.ngrrec.org/rain_gardens.htm. 

Science Report: Climate, Turtles and Aquatic Plants
By Drs. John K. Tucker and Richard E. Sparks

Northward range expansion of a southern turtle.  During the past 13 years, the red-eared slider turtle (Trachemys scripta elegans) has become increasingly abundant in several of the floodplain lakes where the Illinois River joins the Mississippi River (the confluence area just north of St. Louis, Missouri).  This turtle is primarily a southern species, ranging from Illinois to Louisiana and Texas, that was once less common in the confluence area.

Response to a warming trend. The sliders have become more abundant because the turtles have a longer nesting season and produce an extra clutch of eggs each year in response to a warming trend. 

Importance of floods.  The nesting season usually coincides with the peak and recession of the spring flood. The rising flood enables female sliders to access food on the floodplain or in the expanding floodplain lakes, so they increase their body weight and probably their reproductive output. But flooding also poses a danger to the sliders, because the eggs are buried in nests in the ground and the hatchling sliders are subject to drowning before they emerge from the nests the following spring. (The effects of declining precipitation and flood heights during the past 13 years are discussed in the last paragraph below.)

Implications of increased slider populations. Sliders may compete directly with other planteaters, including ducks, such as canvasbacks. They could become a management problem for fish and wildlife managers, who are trying to restore aquatic vegetation in floodplain lakes and backwaters along the Illinois and Upper Mississippi rivers.  Increased consumption of aquatic plants could have additional detrimental effects on the ecosystem itself, as described next.

Why is the threat to aquatic plants important?  The importance of the plants extends well beyond food and habitat, to maintenance of desirable physical and chemical conditions in the floodplain lakes. The leaves and stems of the plants dampen waves created by boats or wind, and the roots anchor the bottom of the floodplain lakes. If the plants start to decline, the waves resuspend bottom sediments, creating muddy water, which in turn reduces light penetration and photosynthesis. Reduced photosynthesis further weakens the plants. Once a decline is underway, the increased waves and sediment resuspension can uproot the remaining plants. As a result, the plant community can collapse, and a clear, vegetated lake can change abruptly into a muddy body of water that supports few or no desirable species of fish and wildlife. Once a lake is in a degraded state, it is difficult to restore, because any new plants that appear may be quickly consumed by hungry turtles, muskrats, and ducks, or uprooted by wave action.

Other desirable ecosystem services, in addition to physical stabilization of the lakes, can be lost as well, including recycling of nutrients. Without the plants, excess nitrogen from farm fields and municipal and industrial sources can accumulate in anoxic bottom sediments, where it can be converted into ammonia, which is toxic to fingernail clams and aquatic insects that burrow in the sediments and are important food for fish and diving ducks. The plants prevent harmful accumulations of ammonia through three processes. First, many species of aquatic plants pump oxygen into their roots, which keeps portions of the bottom sediments oxygenated, thereby preventing formation of toxic ammonia from other forms of nitrogen. Second, even if ammonia does form, the plants take it up as a nutrient.  Third, microorganisms grow on the submersed stems and leaves of aquatic plants and recycle nitrogen back into the atmosphere through a process known as denitrification, thereby preventing a buildup of nitrogen.

Will the sliders continue to increase? A second trend, decreasing precipitation in the spring, may counteract the effect on sliders of the warming trend. Decreasing precipitation results in reduced flooding, which reduces access to feeding areas by the female turtles. The females are in poorer condition (as measured by their body weight), which in turn should reduce the number of nesting attempts per year. So although the warming trend has produced more sliders, the decreasing flooding may in the long term constrain their reproductive output. Only time and additional observations will tell.

Long Term Resource Monitoring Program Tracks River Indicators
By Dr. Richard E. Sparks

People often ask if the Mississippi River is getting better. One way of answering that question is to check the status of the plants and animals that depend on the river and are valued by humans (including conservationists, birdwatchers, hunters, anglers and commercial fishermen). Apart from being valued in their own right, these same plants and animals can also be regarded as indicators of the condition of the river. If the habitat is degraded or the river has too little oxygen or too many toxic contaminants, the populations of these valued species decline. If conditions improve, the populations should maintain themselves or even increase. Populations of selected plants and animals on the Illinois River and Upper Mississippi River have been monitored since 1988 by two federal agencies (the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey) and five states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri) in a cooperative program known as the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP). Six river reaches, or “pools” considered representative of the two rivers are sampled nearly every year by crews from six stations maintained by the states and supported jointly by the states and the two federal agencies. One of the six is the Great Rivers field station, temporarily located in rented quarters at Brighton, Illinois. The field station is a unit of the Illinois Natural History Survey and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, partners in NGRREC. The permanent home for the field station and for the monitoring program on the lower Illinois River and the reach of the Mississippi between Lock and Dam 26 and Lock and Dam 25 will be the new field station of the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center.

The director of the national Great Rivers field station, Dr. John Chick, is also a member of the staff of NGRREC and the team leader for the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program on the portion of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers in the confluence area. He reports below on the value of the rivers and on some of the findings from monitoring program. The answer to whether the rivers are getting better turns out to be far from simple.  As Dr. Chick notes below, the impact of the recent invasion of the rivers by Asian carp is still under study, and there is still much to be learned about why the great flood of 1993 had a beneficial but short-lived effect on many valued fishes. We plan to invite Dr. Chick back to the pages of the Great Rivers Review, for additional updates on the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program.
 

Highlights From the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program at the Great Rivers Field Station
By Dr. John Chick

Do you know which of the following was visited by the most outdoor recreationists?  a) Yellowstone National Park; b) Everglades National Park; c) the Upper Mississippi River. Most people in Missouri and Illinois are surprised that the answer is “c”.  In addition to the beautiful scenery along the great river roads, the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers have abundant fish and wildlife populations, including spectacular bird migrations that attract many visitors from beyond the river valleys as well as local residents. People are also surprised that both rivers have viable commercial fisheries.  Over 5.6 million pounds of fish were harvested from the Mississippi and Illinois rivers in 2002 by commercial fishers in Illinois, with a wholesale value of $1.2 million (source: Rob Maher, Illinois Department of Natural Resources).

Information on fish populations from the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP) provides anglers, commercial fishermen and fishery managers with important information on the status and trend of fish populations in the Upper Mississippi River, allowing for sound management of this valuable resource. Such information could not be obtained by relying solely on the catch reported by commercial fishermen, because the commercial catch varies not just with the abundance of fish in the river, but also with the price of the fish, the amount of time the commercial fishermen devote to fishing each year, catch regulations, and the type of fishing gear used. In contrast, the LTRMP sampling is done with the same gear every year, and the catch is reported in standard units of fishing effort (such as the number of fish caught per hour of electrofishing or per overnight set of a certain type of net), so the LTRMP results are indicative of the number of fish in the river.

When trends in commercial catch do not correspond to trends in LTRMP data, this can be a cause for concern, especially when the commercial catch remains constant or increases at the same time that LTRMP trends are declining. This situation can arise when commercial fishermen devote increasing fishing effort toward a profitable species, even though the species may be in decline. This appears to be the case for buffalo fish (Ictiobus spp.) in Pool 26, so it will be important to continue monitoring the abundance of these species.

The LTRMP network has also documented the establishment and population explosions of several non-native species within the Mississippi River Basin.  Most notably, the program has documented the spread of silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) and bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) as they move upstream within the basin. Downstream movements of invasive species have also occurred, from the Great Lakes through the Chicago canal system and into the Illinois River. Species that have moved downstream through the manmade connection at Chicago include white perch (Morone americana), zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha), crustaceans called scuds (Apocorophium lacustre), and the aquatic plant Eurasian milfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum).

Because LTRMP data have been collected consistently for many years, important insights into the population dynamics of fishes can be gained by examining responses to significant events. For example, the Great Flood of 1993 allowed fishes more access to the floodplain, which can provide important reproductive and nursery habitats.  By comparing the abundance of one-year-old fish (based on length) in 1994 with all other years, we can look for evidence of increased reproductive success associated with the 1993 flood. Several fishes appear to have produced exceptionally strong year classes in 1993, including common carp, largemouth bass and black crappie. Further insights can be gained by following the fate of these year classes. For example, despite the exceptional 1993 year class, the overall abundance of most basses and sunfishes (largemouth bass, bluegill, and crappie) declined for several years after 1993. Was there just not enough food or habitat to support the increased numbers of fish after 1993? If so, are there any management actions that could be taken to mimic the beneficial effects of the 1993 flood, while not causing economic damage or otherwise impairing other uses of the river?  Stay tuned for additional insights and developments!

Supporting NGRREC
By Kathy Turner

National Great Rivers Research and Education Center receives grants and private foundation support for many of its major research projects, and programs and the new field station construction. These supporters play a valuable role in the successes of NGRREC and the impact of its programs.

Individuals, corporations and organizations can also play a role in the programs of NGRREC. Whether you are interested in supporting the field station construction, research projects, environmental education programming, internship scholarships, the Water Festival or RiverWatch, your gifts are greatly appreciated. No matter how large or small, these gifts assist us in continuing the valuable mission of NGRREC to be a “leader in scholarship research, education and outreach related to the interconnectedness of large rivers, their floodplains and watersheds, and their associated communities.” 

For more information on how you may become a supporter of NGRREC, please contact Kathy Turner by phone at 618-468-4010, or by mail at kturner@lc.edu, 

Terrestrial Floodplain Ecology
By Dr. Lyle Guyon

NGRREC’s terrestrial ecology program develops and implements research and monitoring programs that complement the center’s aquatic ecology program. Rivers and their floodplains have a strong ecological connection, and this represents a collective effort to study the entire river ecosystem and how its individual components interact with one another. Knowledge of the integrated ecological functions and hydrological processes of rivers and their terrestrial floodplain communities will in turn provide a sound foundation for ecosystem management practices.

Current NGRREC terrestrial ecology activities focus on an array of topics, including long-term ecological monitoring of floodplain forests, surveying natural regeneration dynamics in a successional chronosequence of floodplain forests, monitoring floodplain forest restoration activities, and assessing the extent of the invasive species Japanese hops (Humulus japonicus) in the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS). Below is a summary of an additional (and ongoing) terrestrial ecology research project that has been undertaken by scientists at NGRREC and some of its partner institutions.

Ecological Assessment of High Quality UMRS Floodplain Forests

Historical and present-day disturbances such as timber harvesting, land conversion and river impoundment have contributed to long-term changes in the composition, structure and health of UMRS floodplain forests. A loss of tree species diversity, most importantly the hard mast component (e.g., oaks), has been identified as an important management concern in this ecosystem, and floodplain forest restoration has become a premier issue in the UMRS. Planting trees over large areas can quickly become very expensive, so it is important to know where to locate them so that they have the best chance for survival. However, successfully matching different species of trees (and associated vegetation) to different conditions encountered along the complex environmental gradients typically found in floodplains requires a stronger foundation of baseline ecological information. For example, certain hard mast species may be entirely unsuited for reforestation in pooled reaches immediately upriver of locks and dams due to their inability to tolerate continuously elevated water tables.

The use of high-quality reference sites as targets for ecological restoration efforts is well documented, and to address this issue in the UMRS, we first need to delineate remnant high-quality floodplain forests and assess their ecological characteristics. This will enable us to identify a set of significant environmental variables that will provide insight into community structure and guide floodplain forest restoration efforts at local and/or regional scales. This will be of use not only to resource managers, but also to other scientists interested in incorporating such information into models designed to facilitate future restoration efforts throughout the UMRS.

This collaborative research project involves investigators from NGRREC, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and the Illinois Natural History Survey’s Great Rivers field station, and was funded through an external competitive grant from the Additional Program Elements section of the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program.

Watershed Project
By Vera Bojic

The Watershed Project is a recent addition to the Illinois RiverWatch Network that provides students in grades 5 to 12 with a unique, hands-on opportunity to learn about, care for and protect local streams. Ten schools and 20 teachers have been involved in the project since its inception nearly a decade ago. It is an effective way to engage students in a community service and help them foster a sense of stewardship for the environment by utilizing the watershed as an outdoor classroom. 

Schools, Scout groups, 4-H clubs and all educators are welcome to participate in the project. After a stream site is adopted, the coordinator joins the group on the first monitoring trip and trains them on site. Volunteers are taught to collect baseline data on the physical, chemical and biological parameters of a stream as outlined in the Watershed Project manual. Examples of parameters include measuring stream flow and water temperature, testing for dissolved oxygen, nitrates and phosphates using a simple water chemistry kit, and collecting benthic macroinvertebrates with aquatic nets.

In addition to collecting water quality data, groups are encouraged to do additional service projects, such as litter cleanup and storm drain stenciling. In the past three years alone, Watershed Project teachers and students have cleaned and improved the aesthetic value of approximately 150 miles of streams within four counties.

“The Watershed Project will offer my students real-world experience in managing, collecting, and organizing meaningful scientific data,” said a fifth-grade teacher after completing a training workshop. “I am most pleased that my students will grow in their appreciation and stewardship of the ecological issues surrounding water pollution and watershed management.”

Visit the project web site at http://www.ngrrec.org/river_watchwatershed.htm for more information on how educators and students can help promote and preserve the health of Illinois streams.

National Great Rivers Research and Education Center
Located at the Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey, Illinois
5800 Godfrey Road, Godfrey, IL 62035
(618) 468-4810

Copyright © 2007