1991 Minnesota Water Research Needs Assessment

WATER RESEARCH IS ESSENTIAL to management and policy decisions made in Minnesota. For research to adequately support management and policy, it must be properly focused on the key questions facing Minnesotans. It must also be adequately and consistently financed. The purpose of this assessment is to help focus research in its support of management and policy. Ultimately, it is also to help the state meet its goals for managing and protecting Minnesota's water resources. The Minnesota Water Plan (MWP) articulates these goals. They are: "To improve and maintain the high quality and availability of Minnesota's water for future generations and long-term health of the environment. "To ensure that our uses of water are sustainable, and that in meeting our needs for water, we recognize its limits and interconnections, accept its changing and variable nature, and adjust our demands upon it when necessary to safeguard it for future needs." Research must allow us to adequately understand and describe the "quality and availability of Minnesota's waters," and the "long-tern health of the environment" It must help us understand water's interconnections and define what "sustainable" might mean in the context of land and water uses. It must help us understand why and how there are limits to these uses.