Methods for Quantifying Shallow-Water Habitat Availability in the Missouri River

Abstract

As part of regulatory requirements for shallow-water habitat (SWH) restoration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) completes periodic estimates of the quantity of SWH available throughout the lower 752 mi of the Missouri River. To date, these estimates have been made by various methods that consider only the water depth criterion for SWH. The USACE has completed estimates of SWH availability based on both depth and velocity criteria at four river bends (hereafter called reference bends), encompassing approximately 8 river miles within the lower 752 mi of the Missouri River. These estimates were made from the results of hydraulic modeling of water depth and velocity throughout each bend. Hydraulic modeling of additional river bends is not expected to be completed for deriving estimates of available SWH. Instead, future estimates of SWH will be based on the water depth criterion. The objective of this project, conducted by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the USACE Omaha District, was to develop geographic information system methods for estimating the quantity of available SWH based on water depth only. Knowing that only a limited amount of water depth and channel geometry data would be available for all the remaining bends within the lowermore » 752 mi of the Missouri River, the intent was to determine what information, if any, from the four reference bends could be used to develop methods for estimating SWH at the remaining bends. Specifically, we examined the relationship between cross-section channel morphology and relative differences between SWH estimates based on combined depth and velocity criteria and the depth-only criterion to determine if a correction factor could be applied to estimates of SWH based on the depth-only criterion. In developing these methods, we also explored the applicability of two commonly used geographic information system interpolation methods (TIN and ANUDEM) for estimating SWH using four different elevation data scenarios. Relative differences in SWH estimates among the four data scenarios were compared to illustrate estimation ranges.« less