Lower Meramec River Floodplain Tool

The Lower Meramec River Floodplain Prioritization Tool is designed to identify critical opportunities for floodplain protection and restoration in the lower Meramec River basin in Missouri. The geography represented in this tool is located within the Ozark Highlands ecoregion and is considered highly biodiverse, containing 11 federally listed and 37 state-listed species. Including both urban and rural areas, the lower Meramec basin spans 3 counties, 8 municipalities, and 115 river miles. Over the past decade, this geography has experienced multiple record flood events, significant urban development in flood-prone areas, and repetitive flood damage to critical infrastructure – and socioeconomic conditions within this geography make it especially highly vulnerable to flood events.

Initially created to support the development and implementation of the Silver Jackets Lower Meramec Multi-Jurisdictional Flood Management Plan, this tool leverages national as well as highly localized data to enable the user to identify high-priority floodplain conservation areas on the basis of criteria related to water quality, connectivity, existing conservation priorities, habitat, potential exposure to flooding of people and/or built assets, and social vulnerability of local communities. The map changes in response to user selections to identify sites that meet all selected criteria and help identify geographies where floodplain conservation is likely to have the greatest positive impact within the basin.