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The Upper Mississippi River System—Topobathy

March 23, 2017

The Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS), the navigable part of the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, is a diverse ecosystem that contains river channels, tributaries, shallow-water wetlands, backwater lakes, and flood-plain forests. Approximately 10,000 years of geologic and hydrographic history exist within the UMRS. Because it maintains crucial wildlife and fish habitats, the dynamic ecosystems of the Upper Mississippi River Basin and its tributaries are contingent on the adjacent flood plains and water-level fluctuations of the Mississippi River. Separate data for flood-plain elevation (lidar) and riverbed elevation (bathymetry) were collected on the UMRS by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) Program. Using the two elevation datasets, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) developed a systemic topobathy dataset.

Publication Year 2017
Title The Upper Mississippi River System—Topobathy
DOI 10.3133/fs20163097
Authors Jayme M. Stone, Jenny L. Hanson, Stephanie R. Sattler
Publication Type Report
Publication Subtype USGS Numbered Series
Series Title Fact Sheet
Series Number 2016-3097
Index ID fs20163097
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center