Scientists could glimpse the big picture of pollution in the Upper Mississippi River basin under proposals by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, DFL-Minn., and Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis.

Klobuchar and Kind want the U.S. Geological Survey to develop a water-quality monitoring network to track nutrient and sediment runoff into the Upper Mississippi and its tributaries.

Much of that monitoring already is being done by state and local groups, particularly in southeast Minnesota, where environmental officials say they’ve tracked water-quality far more closely in the last decade. But Klobuchar and Kind say their proposal would assemble data from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa and Illinois to target areas where pollution is best and worst within the Upper Mississippi basin.

The entire Mississippi River basin takes up more than 40 percent of the United States, and is divided into separate sub-basins for the Upper and Lower Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Red rivers. Scientists say the Upper Mississippi contributes more than its share of the nutrient pollution creating the “dead zone” – an area where plant and animal life is severely impaired - in the Gulf of Mexico.

For more, see Thursday’s Daily News.