Publications

Summer water temperatures in the Skykomish, Snoqualmie, and Middle Fork Snoqualmie Rivers in western Washington have in recent decades exceeded the water temperature criteria for aquatic life uses set by the Washington Department of Ecology. This temperature increase is of particular concern because these rivers provide critical habitat for several salmonid populations, including...

Introduction Streams that flow throughout summer (“permanent” streams) provide critical habitat for aquatic species and serve as an important water supply. Streams that go dry seasonally or only flow after rainfall or snowmelt are a natural feature of mountain systems, including Mount Rainier National Park. However, in years with substantially less than normal snowfall, like 2015, more...

This status report summarizes data collection from Summer 2020 for the Stormwater Action Monitoring (SAM) project.

The Puget Sound basin encompasses the 13,700-square-mile area that drains to the Puget Sound and the adjacent marine waters of Washington State. Well more than 4 million people live within the basin, with numbers continuing to increase, who rely on the basin’s natural resources including groundwater. The Puget Sound Partnership was created by a Washington State statute to implement a...

Streamflow monitoring networks provide information for a wide range of public interests in river and streams. A general approach to evaluate monitoring for different interests is developed to support network planning and design. The approach defines three theoretically distinct information metrics (coverage, resolution, and representation) based on the spatial distribution of a variable...

Understanding land surface change in and sediment export out of proglacial landscapes is critical for understanding geohazard and flood risks over engineering timescales and characterizing landscape evolution over geomorphic timescales. We used automated Structure from Motion software to process historical aerial photographs and, with modern lidar data, generated a high-resolution DEM...

This report describes status and trends in watershed condition across the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) area over the first 25 years since its inception in 1994. The program charged with this task is the Aquatic and Riparian Effectiveness Monitoring Program (AREMP), which has assembled information from field data collection, spatial datasets, and a host of landscape models to evaluate the...

The City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, depends on groundwater from the Cedar River alluvial aquifer for residential and industrial use. In 2020, the city completed an additional radial collector well, or Ranney well, and was concerned that pumping from the well at high rates may lower water level elevations in the aquifer, reduce yields from nearby production wells, and change the quality of...

Accurate mapping of streams that maintain surface flow during annual baseflow periods in mountain headwater streams is important for informing water availability for human consumption and is a fundamental determinant of in-channel conditions for stream-dwelling organisms. Yet accurate mapping that captures local spatial variability and associated local controls on surface flow presence...

This study evaluates the laser in situ scattering and transmissometry (LISST) instrument LISST-SL2, a laser diffraction instrument for suspended sediment sampling in rivers, with concurrent physical measurements of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) and particle size distribution (PSD) as well as velocity measurements by an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP). We collected 136...

Improvements in timber harvest practices and reductions in harvest volumes over the past half century are commonly presumed to have reduced sediment loads in many western US rivers. However, direct assessments in larger watersheds are relatively sparse. Here, we compare 2019–21 sediment concentrations against those of the late 1970s in the Bogachiel and Calawah River watersheds, adjacent...

The Columbia River provides important cultural, economic, and ecological services to a significant portion of the United States. Anadromous and resident fish species and other wildlife are integrated into the cultural traditions of all Tribes in the Columbia River Basin. Salmon, lamprey, sturgeon, and resident fish are an integral part of Tribal religion, culture, and physical sustenance...