Flooding to Restore Connectivity of Regulated, Large-River Wetlands: Natural and controlled flooding as complementary processes along the lower Missouri River

Abstract

You can always count on finding the Mississippi just where you left it last year. But the Missouri is a tawny, restless, brawling flood. It cuts corners, runs around at night, fills itself with snags and traveling sandbars, lunches on levees, and swallows islands and small villages for dessert. Its perpetual dissatisfaction with its bed is the greatest peculiarity of the Missouri.… It makes farming as fascinating as gambling. You never know whether you are going to harvest corn or catfish (Fitch 1907, p. 637).

Author notes

David L. Galat (e-mail: )is assistant unit leader for fisheries of the US Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division, Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, and associate professor at the School of Natural Resources, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. Leigh H. Fredrickson is Rucker Professor of Fisheries and Wildlife and director of the Gaylord Memorial Laboratory, University of Missouri, Puxico, MO 63960. Dale D. Humburg is a wildlife research biologist, Karen J. Bataille is a wildlife staff biologist, and Rochelle B. Renken is a wildlife research biologist at the Missouri Department of Conservation, Fish and Wildlife Research Center, Columbia, MO 65201. John R. Jones is a professor of limnology, Matthew F. Knowlton is a postdoctoral fellow in limnology, Greg T. Gelwicks is a research associate in fisheries, and John B. Hooker, John Kubisiak, Amanda McColpin, and Joyce Mazourek are graduate research assistants in the School of Natural Resources, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. John Dohrenwend is a consulting geologist, 5755 E. River Road, Tucson, AZ 85750. Douglas L. Helmers is a research biologist who holds joint appointments with the Missouri Department of Conservation and the US Department of Agriculture, Natural Resource Conservation Service, Columbia, MO 65203. Raymond D. Semlitsch is an associate professor of biology and J. Russell Bodie is a graduate research assistant in the Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. John E. Havel is an associate professor of biology, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, MO 65804.