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The Upper Mississippi River (UMR) flows south about 1,300 miles from its headwaters in Minnesota to its confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. The river gains volume along its path as it drains nearly 190,000 square miles (490,000 km2) of land, extending over parts of South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri (fig. 1). The UMR is valued as a multiple-use resource where commercial navigation, water supply, and recreational demands coexist with valued natural resources. Some 7%80 million tons of commodities are transported on the river annually. More than 30 million residents rely on river water for uses such as public and industrial supplies and power plant cooling. The river hosts about 12 million recreational visitors annually. When the public has been asked to identify priorities for the river, however, environmental uses were considered more important (Carlson, 1999). The river is home to a wide variety of wildlife, fish, and aquatic invertebrates. Added to these year- round residents are the many bird species that migrate through the corridor or stop seasonally to breed or overwinter (fig. 2). The fact that three major National Wildlife Refuge complexes and several National Park units have been established along the corridor of the UMR reflects the river's importance to the natural resources of the Nation.
A large area of coastal waters in the northern Gulf of Mexico experiences seasonal conditions of low levels of dissolved oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia. Excess discharge of nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers causes nutrient overenrichment in the gulf's coastal waters and stimulates the growth of large algae blooms. When these algae die, the process of decomposition depletes dissolved oxygen from the water column and creates hypoxic conditions. In considering how to implement provisions of the Clean Water Act to strengthen nutrient reduction objectives across the Mississippi River basin, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requested advice from the National Research Council. This book represents the results of the committee's investigations and deliberations, and recommends that the EPA and U.S. Department of Agriculture should jointly establish a Nutrient Control Implementation Initiative to learn more about the effectiveness of actions meant to improve water quality throughout the Mississippi River basin and into the northern Gulf of Mexico. Other recommendations include how to move forward on the larger process of allocating nutrient loading caps-which entails delegating responsibilities for reducing nutrient pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus-across the basin.
Phosphorus and nitrogen, collectively referred to as nutrients, have been an increasingly important water quality issue in the Upper Mississippi River (UMR) Basin. While nutrients are necessary for aquatic life, at concentrations significantly above natural background they can pose a threat to the use of waterbodies by humans and aquatic life..." p. vi.