Welcome to Iowa-Cedar Rivers Basin
The Iowa-Cedar Rivers Basin is a 12,620 mi2 (32,686 km2) mixed-use basin with a vibrant agricultural sector for crop and livestock production, major manufacturing and high tech industries, and three major growing urban centers. The basin population is about 1 million. In the last several years, the changes in the landscape and in the hydrologic regime of the rivers have increased stress on fresh water sustainability leading to crises such as the Gulf hypoxia (due to excessive export of nutrient loading into the Mississippi River) and epic flooding (notably, the floods of 1993 and 2008). Water agencies, the public and the academia are increasingly partnering to face these crises by forging actionable interagency partnerships, building capacity and infrastructure, and mobilizing the local intellectual resources toward addressing and solving the pressing societal problems related to sustainable water resources.
