Upper Mississippi River native mussel sampling quadrat 1000-meter radius hydrologically-enforced buffers and associated landscape metric calculations

A systematic sampling design was developed to sample mussels in Upper Mississippi River navigation Pools 3, 5, 6, 8, 13 and 18. Hydrologically-enforced buffers were created at a hierarchy of scales to better determine the extent of influence on mussel population assemblages. Buffers were generated using a radii of 1000 meters from the quadrat site point. Several landcape metrics related to the buffer shape, underlying water depth at several modeled river discharges, aquatic vegetation presence, river training structure presence, topographic position, aquatic area classification, adjacent land use types, and wind fetch magnitude were then calculated to help assess which of these metrics/indices are predictive of the distribution, abundance, diversity, and recruitment of native mussels across these six pools in the Upper Mississippi River.