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Missouri River Floodplain from River Mile (RM) 670 South of Decatur, Nebraska to RM 0 at St

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Missouri River Floodplain from River Mile (RM) 670 South of Decatur, Nebraska to RM 0 at St Hydrogeomorphic Evaluation of Ecosystem Restoration Options For The Missouri River Floodplain From River Mile (RM) 670 South of Decatur, Nebraska to RM 0 at St. Louis, Missouri Prepared For: U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 3 Minneapolis, Minnesota Greenbrier Wetland Services Report 15-02 Mickey E. Heitmeyer Joseph L. Bartletti Josh D. Eash December 2015 HYDROGEOMORPHIC EVALUATION OF ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION OPTIONS FOR THE MISSOURI RIVER FLOODPLAIN FROM RIVER MILE (RM) 670 SOUTH OF DECATUR, NEBRASKA TO RM 0 AT ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI Prepared For: U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 3 Refuges and Wildlife Minneapolis, Minnesota By: Mickey E. Heitmeyer Greenbrier Wetland Services Advance, MO 63730 Joseph L. Bartletti Prairie Engineers of Illinois, P.C. Springfield, IL 62703 And Josh D. Eash U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 3 Water Resources Branch Bloomington, MN 55437 Greenbrier Wetland Services Report No. 15-02 December 2015 Mickey E. Heitmeyer, PhD Greenbrier Wetland Services Route 2, Box 2735 Advance, MO 63730 www.GreenbrierWetland.com Publication No. 15-02 Suggested citation: Heitmeyer, M. E., J. L. Bartletti, and J. D. Eash. 2015. Hydrogeomorphic evaluation of ecosystem restoration options for the Missouri River Flood- plain from River Mile (RM) 670 south of Decatur, Nebraska to RM 0 at St. Louis, Missouri. Prepared for U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 3, Min- neapolis, MN. Greenbrier Wetland Services Report 15-02, Blue Heron Conservation Design and Print- ing LLC, Bloomfield, MO. Photo credits: USACE; http://statehistoricalsocietyofmissouri.org/; Karen Kyle; USFWS http://digitalmedia.fws.gov/cdm/; Cary Aloia This publication printed on recycled paper by ii Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ..................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 THE HISTORICAL LMR ECOSYSTEM ............................................................. 5 Geology and Geomorphology ...................................................................... 5 Soils ....................................................................................................... 10 Topography and Elevation .......................................................................... 12 Climate and Hydrology .............................................................................. 12 Plant and Animal Communities ................................................................. 16 Distribution and Extent of Presettlement Habitats ..................................... 24 Osage Reach ................................................................................... 26 Grand Reach .................................................................................. 27 Kansas Reach.................................................................................. 27 Nodaway Reach.............................................................................. 28 Platte Reach ................................................................................... 28 Little Sioux Reach .......................................................................... 28 General Synopsis of Historical Community Distribution ........................... 28 CHANGES TO THE LMR ECOSYSTEM ......................................................... 31 Settlement and Early Landscape Changes ................................................... 31 Later Landscape and Hydrological/Ecosystem Changes .............................. 33 Climate Change ......................................................................................... 39 iii 1 CONTENTS, cont’d. POTENTIAL FLOODPLAIN ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION OPTIONS ....................................................... 41 Ecological Considerations for Restoration of Specific Communities by Reach .......................................... 46 Osage Reach ................................................................................... 46 Grand Reach .................................................................................. 48 Kansas Reach.................................................................................. 49 Nodaway Reach.............................................................................. 51 Platte Reach ................................................................................... 51 Little Sioux Reach .......................................................................... 53 Considerations for a “Landscape-Scale” LMR Ecosystem Conservation/Restoration Vision ..................................... 54 APPLICATION OF INFORMATION (HOW-TO) FROM THIS REPORT ................................................................... 59 MONITORING AND EVALUATION ............................................................... 61 Hydrological Regimes ................................................................................ 61 Long-term Vegetation Changes .................................................................. 61 Restoration Techniques .............................................................................. 62 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................. 63 LITERATURE CITED ......................................................................................... 65 APPENDICES ......................................................................................................A1 MAP SET APPENDICES................................................Separate MAP BOOK iv EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report provides a hydrogeomorphic (HGM) evaluation of ecosystem restoration options for the Lower Missouri River (LMR) floodplain from River Mile (RM) 670 south of Decatur, Nebraska to RM 0 at St. Louis, Missouri. This LMR floodplain covers 680 river miles and about 1.5 million acres. While currently free-flowing, the LMR today is highly regulated by upstream reservoirs and water-control protocols and the river channel is greatly restricted and altered in a channelized form. Most of the large river tributaries in the LMR also have greatly altered land and water uses in their watershed, river channels, and floodplains. Currently, many state and federal agencies, private conservation groups, and other entities are directing efforts to restore and enhance destroyed and degraded habitats in the LMR and its major tributaries. Clearly, a major challenge for the future conservation of this valuable ecosystem is to protect, restore, enhance, and manage critical parts of the historic LMR given the constraints of altered ecological landform, processes, and communities. This report has three objectives: 1. Identify the pre-European settlement (late 1700s to early 1800s) ecosystem attributes and ecological processes in the LMR. 2. Evaluate differences between the presettlement and current conditions in the LMR with specific reference to alterations in hydrology, community structure and distribution, and resource availability to key fish and wildlife species. 3. Identify restoration and management for potential flood- plain community restoration and ecological attributes needed to successfully restore specific habitats and condi- tions within the LMR. Karen Kyle v Report information is provided for six primary ecore- gions, or river valley segments. These include: 1) RM 0 to RM 130 (hereafter referred to as the Osage Reach), 2) RM 131 to RM 250 (Grand Reach), 3) RM 251 to RM 367 (Kansas Reach), 4) RM 368 to RM 463 (Nodaway Reach), 5) RM 464 to RM 595 (Platte Reach), and 6) RM 596 to RM 680 (Little Sioux Reach). The division of the LMR into these six reaches separates the study area into areas between substantive tributaries that have relatively uniform physiographic and geological characteristics and somewhat similar lengths. All of the selected tributaries that represent LMR separation points add greater than approximately five percent of the cumulative drainage area and/or drains an area of hydrogeo- morphologically different hydrologic responses, sediment yields, or water-quality contributions. Maps of HGM attributes covered in this study are presented in 13 panels, each about 40 miles long, which cover the six reaches. The HGM approach used in this study obtained and evaluated historical and current information about: 1) geology and geomorphology, 2) soils, 3) topography and elevation, 4) hydrological regimes, 5) plant and animal communities, and 6) physical anthropogenic features of landscapes in the LMR. An important part of the HGM approach was the development of a matrix of understanding, and prediction, of potential historical vegetation communities (referred to as PNV) using scientific data discovery and field validation using published literature (such as General Land Office survey notes and maps), vegetation community reference sites, and state-of-the- art understanding of plant species relationships to system attributes. Geospatial maps of all HGM data used in the report are provided in the Map Set Appendix to this report. Major community/habitat types that historically were present in the LMR included: 1) the main river channels and islands/bars of the Missouri River and major tributaries; 2) river chutes and side channels; 3) abandoned channel bot- tomland lakes (oxbows and sloughs); 4) riverfront, floodplain, and slope forests; 5) mesic, wet-mesic, bottomland, and wet prairies (including wet prairie marshes); and woodland-prairie savanna. Descriptions of these community types and relation- ships with HGM attributes
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