Upper Iowa River Watershed Stressor Identification Report

Water quality and biological monitoring in the Upper Iowa River Watershed has been ongoing. As part of the MPCA’s Intensive Watershed Monitoring (IWM) approach, monitoring activities increased in rigor and intensity during 2015, and focused more on biological monitoring (fish and macroinvertebrates) as a means of assessing stream health. The data collected during this period, as well as historic data obtained prior to 2015, were used to identify stream reaches that were not supporting healthy fish and macroinvertebrate assemblages (Figure 1).