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Kristen L Bouska, PhD

Kristen L Bouska

Professional Experience

  • 2015 - present: Ecologist, U.S. Geological Survey, Upper Midwest Environmental Science Center (La Crosse, WI)

  • 2014 - 2015: Post-doctoral Research Associate, University of Missouri (Columbia, MO)

  • 2010 - 2014: Graduate Research Assistant, Southern Illinois University (Carbondale, IL)

  • 2009 - 2010: GIS Specialist, South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks (Pierre, SD)

  • 2009 - 2010: Biology Instructor, Lowe

Education and Certifications

  • Ph.D. - Environmental Resources and Policy, Southern Illinois University, December 2014

    Dissertation: Impacts of climate and land use change on fish species distributions in the Central United States

Science and Products

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Delacroix area Mississippi river delta

Workshop: Natural Solutions to Ecological and Economic Problems Caused by Extreme Precipitation Events in the Upper Mississippi River Basin

Future climate conditions in the Upper Mississippi River Basin are projected to include many more extreme precipitation events. These intense periods of rain can lead to flooding of the Mississippi River itself, as well the small streams and rivers that feed it. This flooding presents a challenge for local communities, farmers, small businesses, river users, and the ecosystems and wildlife in the
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Climate Adaptation Science Centers
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Workshop: Natural Solutions to Ecological and Economic Problems Caused by Extreme Precipitation Events in the Upper Mississippi River Basin

Future climate conditions in the Upper Mississippi River Basin are projected to include many more extreme precipitation events. These intense periods of rain can lead to flooding of the Mississippi River itself, as well the small streams and rivers that feed it. This flooding presents a challenge for local communities, farmers, small businesses, river users, and the ecosystems and wildlife in the
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Northern Illinois Field

Improving the Midwest Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool to support regional climate adaptation

Climate vulnerability assessments are tools that aid in understanding why specific resources are vulnerable to projected changes in climate. A recently developed online climate vulnerability assessment dashboard helps understand where vulnerability is projected to be greatest across watersheds in the Midwest United States (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin
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Climate Adaptation Science Centers
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Improving the Midwest Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool to support regional climate adaptation

Climate vulnerability assessments are tools that aid in understanding why specific resources are vulnerable to projected changes in climate. A recently developed online climate vulnerability assessment dashboard helps understand where vulnerability is projected to be greatest across watersheds in the Midwest United States (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin
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Colorado River looking downstream, Imperial National Wildlife Refuge near Cabin Lake, Arizona.

Developing a Decision Making and Climate Adaptation Framework for National Wildlife Refuge System Managers in the Midwest

Climate change presents new and compounding challenges to natural resource management. With shifting climate patterns, managers are confronted with difficult decisions on how to minimize climate impacts to habitats, infrastructure, and wildlife populations. Further, managers lack the information needed to make proactive management decisions. To address this problem, this project will develop a dec
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Climate Adaptation Science Centers
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Developing a Decision Making and Climate Adaptation Framework for National Wildlife Refuge System Managers in the Midwest

Climate change presents new and compounding challenges to natural resource management. With shifting climate patterns, managers are confronted with difficult decisions on how to minimize climate impacts to habitats, infrastructure, and wildlife populations. Further, managers lack the information needed to make proactive management decisions. To address this problem, this project will develop a dec
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The purple-tinted Black River Delta surrounded by lush green forest from a bird's eye view.

Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Planning for Projected Changes in Water Quality and Quantity for Protected Areas in the Upper Mississippi Watershed

Climate change and the extreme weather associated with it can be a major challenge to landowners and land managers interested in the protection, restoration, recovery, and management of wetlands and wildlife habitats. The Midwest is not only experiencing an increase in average temperatures and precipitation, but also an increase in the frequency of extreme events, such as heat waves and floods. Fo
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Climate Adaptation Science Centers
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Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Planning for Projected Changes in Water Quality and Quantity for Protected Areas in the Upper Mississippi Watershed

Climate change and the extreme weather associated with it can be a major challenge to landowners and land managers interested in the protection, restoration, recovery, and management of wetlands and wildlife habitats. The Midwest is not only experiencing an increase in average temperatures and precipitation, but also an increase in the frequency of extreme events, such as heat waves and floods. Fo
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Habitat diversity and longitudinal connectivity limit the functional diversity and redundancy of fishes in a large river: Data

The csv file includes all individual non-young-of-year fishes collected in unstructured channel borders of the Upper Mississippi River using daytime electrofishing from 1993 through 2015, following LTRM protocols. Data was collected via the Long Term Resource Monitoring element of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Upper Mississippi River Restoration program and the Illinois Natural History Surveys
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Biological Threats and Invasive Species Research Program, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
Filter Total Items: 18

Geomorphic controls on floodplain connectivity, ecosystem services, and sensitivity to climate change: An example from the lower Missouri River

Floodplains of large rivers are exploited for agricultural production, industrial and municipal development, and transportation infrastructure. Recently, increased frequency of costly floods has prompted consideration of whether offsetting benefits might accrue from management of floodplains for ecosystem services. We employed a simple inundation model for 800 km of the Lower Missouri River, USA,
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Ecosystems, Columbia Environmental Research Center, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Resisting-accepting-directing: Ecosystem management guided by an ecological resilience assessment

As anthropogenic influences push ecosystems past tipping points and into new regimes, complex management decisions are complicated by rapid ecosystem changes that may be difficult to reverse. For managers who grapple with how to manage ecosystems under novel conditions and heightened uncertainty, advancing our understanding of regime shifts is paramount. As part of an ecological resilience assess
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Ecosystems, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Identifying monitoring information needs that support the management of fish in large rivers

Management actions intended to benefit fish in large rivers can directly or indirectly affect multiple ecosystem components. Without consideration of the effects of management on non-target ecosystem components, unintended consequences may limit management efficacy. Monitoring can help clarify the effects of management actions, including on non-target ecosystem components, but only if data are col
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Ecosystems, Water Resources, Fisheries Program (unpublished), Cooperative Research Units, Species Management Research Program, New York Water Science Center, Oregon Water Science Center, Upper Midwest Water Science Center, Western Fisheries Research Center

Climate change adaptation thinking for managed wetlands

Climate change presents new and ongoing challenges to natural resource management. To confront these challenges effectively, managers need to develop proactive adaptation strategies to prepare for and deal with the effects of climate change. We engaged managers and biologists from several midwestern U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field stations to understand recent and future climate change effect
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Ecosystems, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Gene flow influences the genomic architecture of local adaptation in six riverine fish species

Understanding how gene flow influences adaptive divergence is important for predicting adaptive responses. Theoretical studies suggest that when gene flow is high, clustering of adaptive genes in fewer genomic regions would protect adaptive alleles from recombination and thus be selected for, but few studies have tested it with empirical data. Here, we used restriction site-associated sequencing t
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Ecosystems, Cooperative Research Units, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Aquatic vegetation dynamics in the Upper Mississippi River over 2 decades spanning vegetation recovery

Macrophytes have recovered in rivers across the world, but long-term data and studies are lacking regarding community assembly and diversity changes coincident with macrophyte recovery. We investigated patterns of aquatic vegetation species composition and diversity in thousands of sites in the Upper Mississippi River, USA, spanning 21 y of monitoring and a period of vegetation recovery. We analyz
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Ecosystems, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning for projected changes in water quality and quantity for protected areas in the upper Midwest

Climate change and the extreme weather associated with it can be a major challenge to natural resource managers charged with the protection, restoration, recovery, and management of wetlands and wildlife habitats. Forecasting the potential impacts of climate changes will be important for decision-makers and land managers seeking to minimize impacts to habitats, infrastructure, and wildlife populat
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Ecosystems, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Mapping climate change vulnerability of aquatic-riparian ecosystems using decision-relevant indicators

Climate change has and is projected to continue to alter historical regimes of temperature, precipitation, and hydrology. To assess the vulnerability of climate change from a land management perspective and spatially identify where the most extreme changes are anticipated to occur, we worked in collaboration with land managers to develop a climate change vulnerability map for the midwestern United
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Ecosystems, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Regime change in a large-floodplain river ecosystem: Patterns in body-size and functional biomass indicate a shift in fish communities

Changes in species dominance may drive regime shifts because dominant biotic feedbacks reflect functional traits of a community. Changes in species dominance has been documented by a 25-year fish community dataset encompassing six reaches of the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. Specifically, common carp (Cyprinus carpio) abundance has declined across all reaches, whereas silver carp (Hypopht
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Ecosystems, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Conceptualizing alternate regimes in a large floodplain-river ecosystem

Regime shifts –persistent changes in the structure and function of an ecosystem - are well-documented in many ecosystems but remain poorly understood in floodplain-river ecosystems. We apply a resilience perspective to large floodplain-river ecosystems by presenting three examples of plausible sets of alternate regimes that are relevant to natural resource management interests within the Upper Mis
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Ecosystems, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Scientific Framework for resilience research on the Upper Mississippi River System

The goal of this research framework is to outline research that would continue to improve our understanding of ecological resilience of the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) and inform management of the system for health and resilience. We provide a broad overview of recently completed and ongoing work that has been funded as a part of the UMRS Ecological Resilience Assessment and related effo
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Ecosystems, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

Applying concepts of general resilience to large river ecosystems: A case study from the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers

Large floodplain-river ecosystems are often highly modified to provide services that society desires, yet these modifications can limit an ecosystem’s ability to adapt to changing conditions. The adaptive capacity of an ecosystem, its general resilience, is a conceptual framework for considering how a system will respond to such changes. We sought to apply aspects of three general resilience princ
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Ecosystems, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Non-USGS Publications**

Bouska, K. L., J. Houser, N. R. De Jager and J. Hendrickson. In Press. Developing a shared understanding of the Upper Mississippi River: the foundation of a resilience assessment. Ecology and Society.
Bouska, K.L., G. Lindner, C.P. Paukert, R.B. Jacobson. 2016. Stakeholder-led science: engaging resource managers to identify science needs for long-term management of floodplain conservation lands. Ecology and Society 21(3):12.
Bouska, K.L. and T.Stoebner. 2015. Characterizing geomorphic change from anthropogenic disturbances to inform restoration of the upper Cache River, IL. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 51(3):734-745.
Bouska, K.L., G.W. Whitledge, and C. Lant. 2015. Development and evaluation of species distribution models for native central U.S. fish species. Hydrobiologia 747:159-176.
Bouska, K.L. and G. Whitledge. 2014. Habitat associations of fish assemblages in the Cache River, Illinois. Environmental Biology of Fishes 97(1):27-42.
Paukert, C.P., K.L. Pitts, J.B. Whittier and J.D. Olden. 2011. Development and assessment of a landscape-scale ecological threat index for the Lower Colorado River Basin. Ecological Indicators 11(2):304-310
Dodds, W.K., W.W. Bouska, J.L. Eitzmann, T.J. Pilger, K.L. Pitts, A.J. Riley, J.T. Schloesser and D.J. Thornburgh. 2009. Eutrophication of U.S. freshwaters: Analysis of potential economic damages. Environmental Science and Technology 43:12-19.
Paukert, C.P., J. Schloesser, J. Eitzmann, J. Fischer, K. Pitts, and D. Thornbrugh. 2008. Effect of Instream Sand Dredging on Fish Communities in the Kansas River USA: Current and Historical Perspectives. Journal of Freshwater Ecology 23:623-634.
Franssen, N.R., K.B. Gido, C.S. Guy, J.A. Tripe, S.J. Schrank, T.R. Strakosh, K.N. Bertrand, C.M. Franssen, K.L. Pitts, and C.P. Paukert. 2006. Effects of floods and intermittence on fish assemblages in a prairie stream. Freshwater Biology 51:2072-2086.

**Disclaimer: The views expressed in Non-USGS publications are those of the author and do not represent the views of the USGS, Department of the Interior, or the U.S. Government.

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Visualizing Vulnerability: A Customizable Assessment of Climate Vulnerability in the Midwest Puts Climate Change on the Map

USGS researchers developed, in collaboration with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service managers, an interactive watershed vulnerability online dashboard...

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