Northeastern Area

The Upper Mississippi River Forest Partnership

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Key Issues

The Upper Mississippi River Forestry Partnership focuses activities, demonstration projects, and cooperative programs on these three key watershed forestry issues in the Upper Mississippi River Basin.

 Water Pollution

Sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus are the main pollutants in the Upper Mississippi watershed. A significant portion of sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus loads to the Mississippi River comes from human activities: runoff and groundwater from farming, discharges from sewage treatment and industrial wastewater plants, and stormwater runoff from city streets.

• Sediment loads caused by row crop farming, urban development, surface mining, and timber harvesting have increased in tributaries of the Upper Mississippi River.
• The delivery of high amounts of nitrogen to the Gulf of Mexico causes a hypoxia zone (abnormally low levels of dissolved oxygen in bottom waters) to expand each summer. The hypoxia zone has persisted and grown for the past decade.
• About 90% of the nitrate load to the Gulf of Mexico comes from nonpoint sources, and over 31% of that load comes from the Upper Mississippi River.

Loss of Migratory Bird Habitat

The north-to-south orientation of the Upper Mississippi River and its contiguous habitat make it critical to the life cycles of many migratory birds.

• It is a globally important migratory flyway for 40 percent of all North American waterfowl and 60 percent of all the bird species in North America.
• The boreal transition forests of the Upper Mississippi provide nearly the entire habitat for species such as Kirtland’s and golden-winged warblers.
• Losses of prairie and oak savanna and transition habitats have threatened other species such as the prairie chicken, Bell’s vireo and cerulean warbler.
• The loss of more than 50% of historic floodplain and valley hardwood forests creates a problem for many waterfowl, raptors, songbirds, and shorebirds.

Forest Loss and Fragmentation

Forests and prairies are the most beneficial land use in the Upper Mississippi River Basin in terms of protecting watersheds and water quality. Nearly all of the prairies and about 70 percent of the forest land have been converted to agriculture and urban land uses. The remaining forest land is critical to watershed health and clean water.

The ability of forests to produce abundant clean water declines as they are broken up (fragmented) and eventually lost. Fragmentation is a process where large, contiguous forest landscapes are broken into smaller, more isolated pieces, often surrounded by human-dominated uses. The loss and continued break up of forest land increasingly impairs water flow and quality, forest health and diversity, and other economic and recreational benefits.

The Upper Mississippi River watershed experienced rapid loss of forest lands in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. Since then, forest conversion is most severe in high-growth areas. Trends in forest ownership show a continuing movement to smaller and smaller forest tracts.