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Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program for Great River Ecosystems
Project Summary
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Mid-Continent Ecology Laboratory at Duluth, MN created the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program for Great River Ecosystems (EMAP-GRE) with the goal of developing and demonstrating a reliable and efficient approach to great river bioassessment. Specific objectives of EMAP-GRE are to (1) develop and demonstrate, in collaboration with states and other partners, an assessment program capable of yielding unbiased estimates of the health of mid-continent great rivers; (2) develop biological indicators for great rivers; and (3) assess the condition of selected great river resources. EMAP-GRE includes the Ohio River from the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers to the confluence with the Mississippi River (about 1560 km); the Upper Mississippi River from Lower St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota to the confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois (about 1400 km); and the Missouri River from Fort Peck Dam in Montana to the confluence with the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri (about 2900 km). Indicators are direct or derived measurements that characterize the health of the ecosystem or one of its critical components. In EMAP-GRE, the emphasis is on biological indicators, including fish, macroinvertebrates, algae, and plankton, but we also collected information on physical habitat, exposure to pollution, ecosystem process, and water quality. Non-biological measurements serve primarily as indicators of the stress that human activities exert on the great river ecosystem.
For additional information visit the EMAP webpage: https://www.epa.gov/emap/greatriver/
Key products
Taylor, D.L., D.W. Bolgrien, T.R. Angradi, M.S. Pearson, and B.H. Hill. Habitat and hydrology condition indices for the Upper Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers. Ecological Indicators.
Angradi, T.R., D.W. Bolgrien, T.M. Jicha, M.R. Pearson, B.H. Hill, D.L. Taylor, E.W. Schweiger, L. Shepard, A.R. Batterman, M.E. Moffett, C.M. Elonen, and L.E. Anderson. 2008. A bioassessment approach for mid-continent great rivers: The Upper Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio (USA). Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. Published online.
Angradi, T.R., E.W. Schweiger, D.W. Bolgrien, P.C. Ismert, and T. Selle. 2004. Bank stabilization, riparian land use and the distribution of large woody debris in a regulated reach of the Upper Missouri River, North Dakota, USA. River Research and Applications 20:829–846.
Angradi, T.R., E.W. Schweiger, and D.W. Bolgrien. 2006. Inter-habitat variation in the benthos of the Upper Missouri River (North Dakota, USA): Implications for great river bioassessment. River Research and Applications 22: 755-773.
Angradi, T.R. (editor). 2006. Environmental monitoring and assessment program, Great River ecosystems field operations manual. EPA/620/R06/002. US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Washington, DC. https://www.epa.gov/emap/greatriver/fom.html
Angradi, T.R., M.S. Pearson, T.M. Jicha, D.L. Taylor, D.W. Bolgrien, M.F. Moffett, K.A. Blocksom, and B.H. Hill. 2008. Using stressor gradients to determine reference expectations for great river fish assemblages. Ecological Indicators. In press.
Angradi, T.R., D.W. Bolgrien, T.M. Jicha, M.S. Pearson. D.L. Taylor, and B.H. Hill. 2009. Multi-spatial-scale variation in benthic and snag-surface macroinvertebrate assemblages in mid-continent (USA) great rivers. Journal of the North American Benthological Society. In press.
Angradi, T.R., M.S. Pearson, D.W. Bolgrien, T.M. Jicha, D.L. Taylor, and B.H. Hill. Multimetric macroinvertebrate indices for bioassessment of mid-continent great rivers. In review.
Angradi, T.R., D.L. Taylor, T.M. Jicha, D.W. Bolgrien, M.S. Pearson, and B.H. Hill. Littoral and shoreline wood in mid-continent great rivers (USA). In review.
Blocksom, K.A., D.M. Walters, T.M. Jicha, J. Lazorchak, T. Angradi, and D.W. Bolgrien. Fish tissue contamination in great rivers of the central basin of the United States. In review.
Bolgrien, D.W., T.R. Angradi, E.W. Schweiger, and J.R. Kelly. 2005. Contemplating the assessment of great river ecosystems. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 103:5-20
Bolgrien, D.W., J.V. Scharold, T.R. Angradi., T.D. Corry, E.W. Schweiger, and J.R. Kelly. Trophic status of three large Missouri River reservoirs. Lake and Reservoir Management. In press.
Bukaveckas, P.A., A. MacDonald, A. Aufdenkampe, J. Chick, J.E. Havel, R. Schultz, T.R. Angradi, D.W. Bolgrien, T.M. Jicha, and D.L. Taylor. Constraints on phytoplankton abundance and their contribution to suspended particulate matter in the Ohio, Upper Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Ecosystems, submitted.
Grigorovich, I.A., T.R. Angradi, E.B. Emery, and M.S. Wooten. 2008. Invasion of the Upper Mississippi River system by saltwater amphipods. Fundamental and Applied Limnology 171: In press.
Grigorovich, I.A., T.R. Angradi, and C.A. Stepien. 2008. Occurrence of the quagga mussel (Dreissena bugensis) and the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) in the Upper Mississippi River System. Journal of Freshwater Ecology 23:429-435.
Haring, H.J., K.A. Blocksom, M.E. Smith, T.R. Angradi, M.C. Wratschko, B. Armstrong, D.W. Bolgrien, and J.M. Lazorchak. Sediment toxicity in mid-continent great rivers (USA). Science of the Total Environment, submitted.
Havel, J.E., K.A. Medley, K.D. Dickerson, T.R. Angradi, D.W. Bolgrien, P.A. Bukaveckas, and T.M. Jicha. Effect of mainstem dams on zooplankton communities in the Missouri River (USA). In review.
Hill, B.H., C.M. Elonen, T.M. Jicha, D.W. Bolgrien, and M.F. Moffett. Sediment microbial enzyme activity as an indicator of nutrient enrichment in rivers of the Upper Mississippi River basin. In review.
Hill, B.H., T.M. Jicha, A.T. Herlihy, D.W. Bolgrien, M.F. Moffett, S.G. Paulsen, and A.R. Olsen. The use of survey data to estimate nutrient export from the Mississippi River basin. In review.
Jicha, T.M., L. Johnson, B.H. Hill, R. Regal, C.M. Elonen, and M.S. Pearson. Spatial and temporal patterns of nitrification rates in forested floodplain wetland soils of the Upper Mississippi River Pool 8. In review.
Pearson, M.S., D.W. Bolgrien, T.R. Angradi, T.M. Jicha, D.L. Taylor, M. Moffett, and B.H. Hill. Multimetric fish indices for mid-continent (USA) great rivers. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. Submitted 2010.
Reavie, E.D., T.M. Jicha, T.R. Angradi. D.W. Bolgrien, and B.H. Hill. Algal assemblages for larger river monitoring: comparison among biovolume, absolute and relative abundance metrics. In review.
Scharold, J,V., T.D. Corry, D.W. Bolgrien, and T.R. Angradi. Invertebrate macrobenthos in three large reservoirs of the Upper Missouri River. In review.
Schweiger, E.W., D.W. Bolgrien, T.R. Angradi, and J.R. Kelly. 2004. Environmental
monitoring and assessment of a great river ecosystem: the upper Missouri River
pilot. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 103:5-20
Taylor, D.L., T.R. Angradi, D.W. Bolgrien, B.H. Hill, T.M. Jicha, M.F. Moffett,
and M.S. Pearson. An index of habitat condition for great rivers. In preparation.
USEPA. An ecological assessment of the mid-continent great rivers: The Upper Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio. Anticipated 2009.
Project personnel
| Name | Phone | |
| Theodore R. Angradi | angradi.theodore@epa.gov | 218-529-5243 |
| David W. Bolgrien | bolgrien.dave@epa.gov | 218-529-5216 |
| Brian H. Hill | hill.brian@epa.gov | 218-529-5224 |
| Thomas P. Hollenhorst | hollenhorst.tom@epa.gov | 218-529-5220 |
| Terri M. Jicha | jicha.terri@epa.gov | 218-529-5153 |
| Mark S. Pearson | pearson.mark@epa.gov | 218-529-5205 |
| Mary F. Moffett | moffett.mary@epa.gov | 218-529-5174 |
| Debra L. Taylor | taylor.debra@epa.gov | 218-529-5180 |
| Colleen M. Elonen | elonen.colleen@epa.gov | 218-529-5195 |
| Leroy E. Anderson | anderson.leroy@epa.gov | 218-529-5352 |
Research project update date
January 25, 2011