This project will enhance our understanding of the role that river sediments play in controlling downstream nutrient loading, eutrophication, and hypoxia and will help provide the foundation to enable future monitoring of sediment-related nutrient fluxes through ground-based remote sensing cameras. The Mississippi River makes an ideal study site because it features intensive agricultural land use, drains ~40% of the contiguous United States, and has delivered excessive nutrient loads to the Gulf of Mexico that have led to eutrophic conditions. Our study will explore the potential for suspended and riverbed sediments to sequester excess nutrients from agriculture that enter rivers and may ultimately be delivered to the global ocean. We will correlate our sediment chemical data with depth modeling and remote sensing. Depth modeling will help identify the particle sizes which transport nutrients and where they are transported in the water column. These efforts could be relevant to mechanical (flow turbulence) influences on nutrient and sediment attachment. Thus, there is potential to “engineer” rivers (i.e., increase or decrease turbulent characteristics) to either reduce or increase the amount of nutrients that attach to sediments. Our remote sensing work will allow us to determine the overall input of nutrients in the suspended load to the ocean across space and time. Our study will be the first to explore the link between problems with nutrient loading and long-term sediment transport trends in the Mississippi River, allowing us to better estimate nutrient loads to the Gulf of Mexico. These efforts will inform ongoing management strategies to mitigate problems with marine dead zones.