Assessing the impacts of mining on the Transboundary Koocanusa Reservoir

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In 2019, the USGS began a water-quality monitoring program in Lake Koocanusa (also known as Koocanusa Reservoir) and at a site on the Kootenai River downstream of Libby Dam to provide high-frequency water-quality data for Federal, State, Provincial, and Tribal entities in the United States and Canada. Objectives of this study are to

1. Collect water-quality samples from multiple depths,
2. Collect continuous vertical profile data to understand limnological processes contributing to variations in selenium concentrations, and
3. Collect time-series samples to compare to an established baseline dataset of selenium concentrations throughout the reservoir.

Monitoring water quality (and fish populations) in Lake Koocanusa and the Kootenai River has been a collaborative effort since at least 1967, when the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the USGS began collecting water samples (Easthouse, 2013) to better understand the relation between Libby Dam operations on the reservoir and downstream effects on the Kootenai River. Monitoring and research by these and other agencies have increased recently because of concerns of a potential increased selenium concentrations in the basin, and a need to better understand the biogeochemical dynamics and ecological effects of selenium in the basin (Presser and Naftz, 2020).

Water-quality data collection in the center of Lake Koocanusa requires a specialized platform to house sampling equipment, sensors, and electronics that transmit data to the internet in real-time during the sampling season.

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details