This proposal aims to answer this question: How would the water quality of Minnesota's lakes change in the next century under future scenarios of urbanization, agricultural growth, and climate change?
Currently, there are approximately 5,050 feedlots with fewer than 300 animal units that need to come into compliance with State feedlot rules. Clean Water Feedlot Water Quality Management Grant funds are being used to provide financial assistance to landowners with feedlot operations less than 300 animal units in size and located in a riparian area or impaired watershed.
This site has been monitored for several years due to past storm events causing flood waters that impacted State Highway 371 and Belle Prairie housing developments. This site is contributing large amounts of sediment and is one of the worst erosion sites identified along the Mississippi River in Morrison County.
This project will analyze existing and projected data to develop simple tools to predict the effect of land use and climate change on extreme floods and droughts.
The project will assess chemical and biological defluorination activities in environmental samples and identify the microorganisms, metabolic pathways, and intermediates resulting from degradation of fluorinated pesticides and pharmaceuticals.
The Minnesota DNR and the Minnesota Forest Resources Council work with forest landowners, managers and loggers to implement a set of voluntary sustainable forest management guidelines that include water quality best management practices (BMPs) to ensure sustainable habitat, clean water, and productive forest soils, all contributing to healthy watersheds. This project will monitor the implementation of these forest management guidelines and BMPs on forested watersheds in MN.
This leadership workshop series will provide the participants (citizen leaders) with knowledge, skills, processes and tools that can help to strengthen their current efforts and nurture new ones.
This project will build the first comprehensive list of Minnesota moths and butterflies. Information gained through surveys and outreach efforts will inform land managers and inspire public appreciation.
River Watch (RW) enhances watershed understanding and awareness for tomorrow’s decision-makers through direct hands-on, field-based experiential watershed science. High School based teams throughout the Minnesota River Basin participate in a variety of unique and innovative watershed engagement opportunities such as Water Quality Monitoring and Macroinvertebrate surveys that are suited to their school, community, and watershed needs.
BWSR will administer funding to eligible County projects that provide funds and other assistance to low income property owners to upgrade or replace Noncompliant Septic Systems. BWSR will also manage annual reporting completed by each County.
The goal of this project is to construct, calibrate, and validate five Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) watershed models. The outcome will be HSPF models that can readily be used to provide information to support conventional parameter TMDLs. These models will generate predicted output timeseries for hydrology, sediment, nutrients, and dissolved oxygen which are consistent with available sets of observed data.
The Crow Wing River Watershed consists of approximately 1,959 square miles in the north to north central portion of the Upper Mississippi River Basin in Central Minnesota. The watershed encompasses all or parts of Becker, Cass, Clearwater, Crow Wing, Hubbard, Morrison, Otter Tail, Todd and Wadena Counties. The dominant land use within the watershed is forested (41%), agriculture (32%), grass, shrub and wetland make up 17%, water (7%) and urban (3%).
Monitoring the health of Minnesota rivers is vital in determining, maintaining, and improving the health of the rivers for the environment and public use. The scope of this project is to collect surface water chemistry samples at designated sampling locations during appropriate time periods and at appropriate frequencies during these time periods for 1 year beginning in February 2015. The data collected and submitted to MPCA will provide information necessary to determine stream characteristics and calculate water quality pollutant loads.
The goal of the High Island Creek Watershed Pollutant Load Monitoring project is to assist the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) with meeting the objectives of the Watershed Pollutant Load Monitoring Network (WPLMN). This will be accomplished by providing staff support throughout fiscal years 2016 and 2017 to conduct water chemistry monitoring at two specified stream locations from ice out through October 31 capturing snow melt, rainfall events and base flow conditions.
The Lower Minnesota River West Partnership (Partnership) is a group of the Counties and Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs) of McLeod, Nicollet, and Sibley, and High Island Creek Watershed District. The Partnership covers an area north and west of the Minnesota River (498,000 acres), including four major tributaries (High Island Creek, Rush River, Silver Creek and Bevens Creek) . The Partnership was formed to develop a Comprehensive Watershed Management Plan (Plan) through the One Watershed, One Plan (1W1P) program detailed in Minnesota Statutes 103B.801.
The Rum River Watershed Partnership will implement Priority Level A and B Actions. While not explicitly called out, actions that obtain multiple benefits to other Level B and C priority issues, such as Natural Resources?Protection, Management, and Restoration of Upland Habitat, a Level B issue, will be given priority. The work plan targets Tier 1-3 waters identified in the CWMP.
