This paper discusses the instigation of a programme intended to create a water-focused upper Mississippi river basin observatory. The observatory would consist of a number of interdisciplinary, multi-institutional teams synergistically collaborating on a series of research sites at different locations within the basin. There is no existing recipe for establishing an observatory, but there is a vast amount of experience and knowledge that can be shared to help establish one. The concept of an observatory process is introduced to encapsulate the long-term, interactive and dynamic nature of what is proposed. Building an observatory should be a collaborative, inclusive and equitable process and could be used to establish a practical problem-solving agenda linking the abundance of research carried out in the upper Mississippi river basin to the needs of mission agencies and stakeholders within the basin. In order to begin the process, a workshop brought together an international team of research scientists and...
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