Upper Mississippi River native mussel sampling quadrat 10, 100, 500 and 1000-meter radius hydrologically-enforced buffers and associated landscape metric calculations

A systematic sampling design was developed to sample mussels in Upper Mississippi River navigation pools 3, 5, 6, 8, 13 and 18. Hydrologically-enforced buffers were created at a hierarchy of scales to better determine the extent of influence on mussel population assemblages. Buffers were generated using a radii of 10, 100, 500 and 1,000 meters from the quadrat site point. Several landscape metrics were then calculated to help assess which of these metrics/indices are predictive of the distribution, abundance, diversity, and recruitment of native mussels across these six pools in the Upper Mississippi River.