About the ILRDSS - Brief Description

ILRDSS Program

The Illinois River has become a focus of state and federal agencies and other organizations interested in integrated watershed management. As a result, issues related to habitat restoration, floodplain management, navigation, erosion and sedimentation, and water quality of the Illinois River are being discussed at the watershed scale.

In support of this effort, the Illinois Scientific Surveys have initiated development of the Illinois Rivers Decision Support System (ILRDSS) for use in documenting project activities within the watershed and assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of potential restoration projects and management practices. The ILRDSS will integrate and expand existing databases and numerical models of segments of the Illinois River into an integrated decision support system (DSS) for the entire Illinois River watershed. New databases and models also will be created for the watershed.

The ILRDSS also will improve dissemination of scientific tools and information by using the Internet as the primary access to inventories of current and historical projects, data, simulations, and involved agencies/participants within the Illinois River watershed. The ILRDSS website provides this information to a larger audience at a lower cost, in a more usable form, and much more quickly than previous outreach methods.