Scientific Focus Area
Below are a few project overview videos, as well as an archive of videos taken of our field sites from various time points. These videos are shared with our team members and collaborators through the Watershed Function Community Science mailing list as a way for researchers to assess site conditions virtually. If you’d like to join this list, please email Ken Williams and Jacob Gimbel.
1. The recorded presentations from the November 12th, 2019 Watershed Science Community Call can be here. For reference, the two keynotes can be found as follows:
2. In the event some of you have yet to hear the news, the second USGS Next Generation Water Observing System (NGWOS) basin was recently announced. The new basin includes the combined drainages of the Upper Colorado and Gunnison Rivers, and it will serve as a western, snow-dominated counterpoint to the Delaware River NGWOS Basin.
This selection represents an incredible opportunity for DOE-BER to engage with USGS and other stakeholders (a driving requirement for NGWOS selections) through two of its SFA projects in the basin led by Berkeley Lab and SLAC. Its selection is expected to amplify BER’s investments in integrated hydrology and biogeochemistry, as well as the future of water in the west more broadly.
3. The dust has now settled on proposal submissions to the NSF Critical Zone Collaborative Network funding opportunity. I know there were some tremendous proposals submitted, and the East River watershed figures prominently in six of these. With some good fortune, we will have the opportunity to more fully engage with a growing critical zone effort across the United States and Puerto Rico. I’ve added the lead PI’s to our email list so they’re kept informed of future actives of relevance in the watershed.
4. For those of you who attended the Bodega Bay retreat last month, you hopefully had the opportunity to meet our new University DOE Early Career Proposal PI, Prof. Issac Larsen of UMASS. Isaac will be presenting his research plan to our Science Committee during one of the planned Spring teleconferences. Isaac is presently looking for a motivated PhD student to join his lab tied to his East River project and the posting can be found here. For faculty on this list who have or know of promising undergrads with an interest in critical zone processes, please pass this listing along.
5. Lastly, the Watershed SFA will be highlighted during a 90-minute block at Berkeley Lab’s Earth & Environmental Sciences Area booth at the AGU meeting. The Watershed pop-up is scheduled from 10a – 1130a on Wednesday December 11th. For those who haven’t had a chance to listen to the “sounds of the earth” and the musical enterprise being led by Antonio Menghini (Aarhus Geophysics) Burke Minsley (USGS), Burke will be joining us at the booth. A short preview of this fascinating enterprise can be found here.
I look forward to seeing many of you in person next week!
For those with an interest in current field conditions and a first look at the sensor suite developed by the Ecohydrogeology group at Berkeley Lab, a virtual site visit from November 7 can be found here.
I wanted to update everyone on the recent shale drilling campaign that wrapped up on Tuesday after 8 days of high productivity and perfect weather.
In brief: We accomplished 100% of what we set out to accomplish.
A more detailed accounting of the work follows:
(a) We set the rig up on well #PLM5 on Tuesday AM, which is the 230-foot borehole from which we collected the continuous core last October. This well had stability issues and collapsed in several places last year before we had to abandon the site due to bad weather. We were able to readily clear the hole back down to 230-feet and added four nested piezometers to sample and monitor conditions at four discrete depths:
3-13 feet
40-80 feet
125-165 feet
210-230 feet [N.B. shale from this depth interval corresponds to the same stratigraphic unit encountered in PLM6, our toe slope well.]
(b) Upon finishing that work, we offset the rig by about 15-feet along the geologic strike direction and drilled a parallel 230-foot hole (well #PLM7) that was cased with 3” slotted PVC and which will be used for geophysical wireline logging, including NMR-derived permeability estimation, and hydrologic testing (e.g. pumping and injection tests).
Regarding that testing, we got an unexpected “jump-start” on that activity. Our rate of penetration (ROP) slowed over the 35-50 foot depth interval, and after checking my core logging notes from last year, I was reminded I’d identified a putative fault zone complete with clay gouge in this interval. While drilling through this interval, we observed water flow from the 40-80 foot piezometer in PLM5 that we interpret to be migration of injected drilling fluids (East River stream water) along the highly conductive fault zone and breakthrough at the consistent depth in PLM5. When drilling stopped, flow from the piezometer would stop; when resumed, flow resumed. Drilling past the 50-foot depth resulted in cessation of flow from the piezometer suggesting a max. depth of the fault zone.
A virtual site visit of the PLM7 drilling site can be found here.
The ROP also slowed down considerably over the last 20-feet consistent with our observations in 2018 and the transition to a different unit of the Mancos shale. So it appears that we have good stratigraphic correlation between the two wells — PLM5 with its nested piezometers and PLM7 with its 3” borehole — that should nicely link the geophysical logging data with the shale core collected in 2018 and currently stored at the USGS core library.
Protective metal well enclosures were added to both PLM7 and PLM8 and we will need to make sure snow poles are added to both locations as the route of the Grand Traverse ski race passes very close to their location and we want to avoid damage when plowing for the route occurs. Our point of contact with Vail Resorts, Mark Voegeli, is cc’ed here to keep him in the loop.
***I’d like to strongly encourage anyone on this email list who has an interest in and aptitude for fractured rock characterization to contact me at their earliest convenience, as the PLM7/8 system is well suited to more detailed hydrological investigations. Let’s talk!
(c) We moved across the East River to well #PLM8 and cored from 0-71 feet, with this location designed to compared aspect controls (N-NE facing vs. S-SW facing) on shale weathering. Recovery over the upper 10-feet was rather poor, so a second shallow hole was used to collect a combination of Shelby tube and split spoon samples. In general, the saprolite / weathering zone here seems just a little shallower than at PLM7 transitioning to what appears to be unweathered bedrock at a depth of 11-feet (3.35-m). In contrast, the weathering zone samples are extremely clay rich likely accounting for the poor core recovery. The unweathered shale bedrock is extremely competent over the entire 11-71 foot interval with very few of the conductive fractures observed at PLM7. Indeed, the fracture water holding capacity of the shale unit at PLM8 appears much less than the upper 200-210 feet of shale at PLM7. This is perhaps not unexpected, given that PLM8 is located down-section stratigraphically from PLM7 (and PLM6) and clearly represents a different shale member and/or facies type.
A 3” well was put in place to allow for geophysical wireline logging from 0-71-feet, and an offset, shallow piezometer from 4.5-9.5 feet was installed to monitor and sample the saprolite / weathering zone.
A virtual site visit of the PLM8 drilling site can be found here.
A photo of this location is attached with the view across the river showing the location of the existing PLM transect, with PLM8 being a deeper clone of our toe slope well PLM6 on the opposite bank.
(d) Three alluvial aquifer wells (2” ID) were installed along the Pumphouse Meander A to D transect. All three wells encountered weathered shale bedrock at a consistent depth of ~15-feet. These wells are being used by Amanda DelVecchia (NC State) for quantification of subsurface carbon flows between trophic levels including stoneflies that assimilate carbon from subsurface methanogens.
(e) Well #GUM1 (Gothic Upper Montane-1) was completed such that it is now fully cased with 3” screen to ground surface. We had lost 120-ft of casing in the hole last year and were not able to fish it out and add an additional 40-ft of screen due to bad weather and a need to halt drilling for the year. This well located on RMBL property is now completed and a protective metal well head was placed over it.
(f) A protective metal well head was added to well #GLS1 (Gothic Lower Subalpine), which is the 3” well successfully installed last year at the fishing bridge upstream of Gothic.
A big thanks to Authentic Drilling for an extremely successful outing this year. Our 3+ week advance start to drilling as compared to last year really made a difference.
News
I’m very excited to announce the recent hiring of Prof. Benjamin Blonder by UC Berkeley!
Ben will be joining the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, which will afford an opportunity for even closer collaboration with Berkeley Lab and its network of investigators given his newfound proximity. Ben’s ongoing work on ploidy level-environment interactions to predict mortality and recruitment in quaking aspen is making use of the NEON hyperspectral dataset and linking it to an extensive network of aspen study sites across the watershed. This work has established some strong areas of collaboration with key members of our SFA team including Dana Chadwick, Kate Maher, and Nicola Falco. Ben has agreed to present this work as part of an upcoming Watershed Science Community Call likely this November. Welcome Ben!
Videos
Meet the Scientist: As part of his recently funded NSF “Rules of Life” proposal, Prof. Pete Raymond (Yale Univ.) is visiting the East River watershed tied to stream sampling of riverine biogeochemical properties along an extended transect of the Gunnison River from upstream of Gothic all the way down to Grand Junction. As part of his visit, I took the opportunity to film a short “Meet the Scientist” video to allow Pete to introduce himself to those of you who don’t already know him or his work. It’s really exciting to be able to integrate this NSF-funded work with SFA project, data, and infrastructure (e.g. stream gages, long-term geochemical data, etc.) especially as it serves as a critical first step in scaling riverine processes to the greater Gunnison Basin. Welcome Pete!
Virtual Site Visit: Given the importance of the early snowmelt manipulation work as it pertains to carbon and water fluxes, I wanted to provide a “virtual site visit” to (re)introduce the Science Community to Amanda Henderson and Chelsea Wilmer who have been working *tirelessly* this summer to collect plot level flux data to examine the impacts of early snowmelt on plant phenology. While a little longer than our typical “site visits”, I think this video is particularly useful in presenting the plot level work and the methodological approach being used to quantify the impacts of early snowmelt on evapotranspiration and carbon fluxes. I encourage everyone to take a look.
I also want to extend my best wishes to Chelsea Wilmer (seen in the attached photo overlooking the Pumphouse snowmelt plots) who will be heading to Ft. Collins to pursue graduate studies at Colorado State University this Fall under the direction of Prof. Stephanie Kampf. Chelsea will still be very much engaged in East River work, and I want to wish her well in this next phase of her life. Good luck Chelsea!
With the onset of warm weather, field work activities in the watershed have really ramped up over the past month. Both Berkeley Lab staff and our DOE-funded University and USGS cohort have been working at multiple sites to quantify the consequences of early snowmelt on ET tied to the manipulation experiments, install sap flow sensors on multiple tree species at multiple sites, examine shale bedrock properties, measure stream discharge and build new rating curves, and much, much more. Additionally, members of the SLAC “Groundwater Quality” SFA — led by PI John Bargar — have greatly ramped up their research footprint in the Slate River valley. We look forward to hearing an update from John this fall on their research progress.
Stream flows are now sufficiently low as to make wading and working within the stream corridor safe. That said, workers crossing and working in streams are reminded to exercise care and to wear appropriate gear, such as waders, wading boots, and hiking pole(s). A virtual site visit can be found here of my recent trip to the large, off-channel wetland complex upstream of the Pumphouse. This site has been an important testbed for the DOE-funded research project led by Marty Briggs (USGS) and his co-investigators Fred Day-Lewis (USGS) and Lee Slater (Rutgers Univ.). Marty will update us on this work during next week’s call.
Road access to Schofield Pass from Gothic via Emerald Lake is still not possible given persistence of the snow plug. Access to the Paradise Divide and our alpine study site on Cinnamon Mountain is possible, however, lingering snow in the Paradise Basin and the approach to Schofield Pass from the north is still preventing vehicular travel at last report. Below are two beautiful shots of Paradise Basin and the mineralized faces of Mt. Baldy and Cinnamon Mountain courtesy of Rosemary Carroll (DRI).
Wildflower season is at or near peak at many locations within the watershed. For those who have recently been at East River or will be soon, it’s a glorious time to be working at the site.
With the flowers come the arrival of the nuisance flies, which aren’t a problem if you’re actively moving or it’s windy. If it’s calm or you’re working in one place, I recommend lightweight, long-sleeve shirts and pants and possibly face netting. We have had one instance in the past where bites from these flies triggered an allergic reaction, so definitely be mindful of their potential impact while you’re working.
The US Forest Service (USFS) has released a vegetation management plan for the Taylor River Basin that may be of considerable interest to members of our Science Community. The plan can be found here and it may represent a strategic opportunity for catchment scientists on our extended team to investigate the impacts of forest management practices on flows of water and nutrients. Interested individuals should feel free to reach out to me and I’m happy to help make arrangements to speak with USFS staff in person or remotely. This could be a strategically important opportunity given our team’s current expansion into the Taylor River Basin tied to the NASA Airborne Snow Observatory data being collected there, as well as work led by David Gochis (NCAR) that he will describe during next Tuesday’s call.
Working with the USGS Colorado Water Science Center, we have submitted the Gunnison River Basin as one of four HUC-4 basins that headwater in the state as possible candidates for the next USGS Next-Generation Water Observing System (NGWOS). The other candidate basins include the Colorado River main stem, the San Juan, and the upper Rio Grande. The NGWOS program is designed to “provide high-fidelity, real-time data on water quantity and quality necessary to support modern water prediction and decision support systems for water emergencies and daily water operations” with the first NGWOS basin being the Delaware River. Should one of the Colorado basins be chosen, it would represent an excellent opportunity for further engagement between our Science Community, the two DOE SFA programs, and our University colleagues to participate in an important USGS-led national effort. I will keep this group updated on the selection process as it proceeds.
Vehicular access to Snodgrass Mountain is currently not allowed. RMBL is currently sorting out land ownership and access issues for the road used for servicing the RMBL weather station at the top of the mountain. While this road has been used by our group in the past to ferry heavy equipment and would be needed for any future drilling activities in 2020 and beyond, no vehicular access is allowed until further notice. Per my last message to the group, all Snodgrass research plans and activities must be clearly communicated with ample notice to Jennie Reithel (RMBL) and myself.
Restrictions are now in place for the Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR) parking lot at their maintenance & operations building. This lot is where our team parks, stages, and drives through en route to the Pumphouse site. Outside of normal business hours for CBMR, which run 7 days a week, a locked red gate may now block vehicular access to Pumphouse. Tied to our Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with CBMR, I do have the gate code and will provide it to those staff working at the Pumphouse site outside of normal business hours. Please contact me in advance if there’s a likely need to work at times when the gate may be locked. Note that with the recent purchase of CBMR by Vail Resorts, I am currently renewing the MOA and will plan to leave hard copies of it at the SFA Red Lady House for personnel to keep in their vehicles when accessing the site. We’ve not had any issues to date, and I’d like to keep it that way given the importance of CBMR as a local stakeholder.
A U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory Managed by the University of California