jgimbel

We have several upcoming items that are worthy of special mention, as they’re broadly relevant to our group and the larger community of RMBL researchers and our growing community of interagency (DOE, USGS, NSF, USFS, NOAA, NASA, etc.) partners. Details and points of contact below.

NASA JPL Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO):

The NASA JPL ASO team conducted their snow-free survey of the Upper Gunnison domain last week, including essentially all of the terrain above the Ohio Creek/Gunnison River confluence. These data will enable retrospective snow depth and SWE mapping from the April 1 and May 24, 2018 flights this past spring, and set the stage for near-real time snow mapping in winter and spring 2019. This is a huge deal and incredibly important as we engage our collaborators with NCAR and NOAA on further developing a snow-focused computational testbed in the upper Gunnison.

Recall that this activity has been made possible through the vigorous engagement of the Upper Gunnison Water Conservancy District (thank you Frank and John) and with funding from the State of Colorado and champions at the Colorado Water Conservation Board (thank you Joe).

Also a reminder that this work is critically important to two of the three newly funded DOE SBR University snow science proposals at East River: Jeff Deems (CU) and McKenzie Skiles (Univ. Utah). So great news that this snow free-baseline dataset is now in hand.

NASA SnowEx:

I am excited to announce that the NASA SnowEx campaign will be active in the broader East River / Watershed Function SFA domain this winter and spring (2018/19). NASA SnowEx is coupled multi-year remote sensing and field experiment to develop and refine techniques for mapping terrestrial snow cover around the globe to address important water resources, water cycle, and climate feedback challenges. In 2017, SnowEx conducted intensive, month-long campaigns on Grand Mesa and in Senator Beck Basin in western Colorado. In 2019, SnowEx will leverage ongoing and planned observation activities around the western US to collect time series data of snowpack evolution throughout the accumulation and melt seasons in a diversity of snow climates at sites in CA, ID, UT, CO, and NM.

In the East River domain specifically, the SnowEx campaign will build on planned ASO flights (funded by the Colorado Water Conservation Board) and the aforementioned recently-funded DOE snow observation and modeling projects (see above; Deems, Skiles, Alejandro Flores [Boise State] PIs) and NSF (Raleigh [CU]), with the broader Watershed SFA activities adding valuable synergies. Additional ASO winter flights are being planned, as well as twice-monthly UAVSAR (L-band interferometer) overflights. These airborne acquisitions will be supported by regular ground observations and periodic extensive field campaigns to sample gradients in snow properties and processes.

At the risk of underselling this — this is a huge deal. Please contact Jeff Deems (deems@nsidc.org) with any questions!

Upcoming drilling activities:

Building upon our very successful drilling projects with USGS in Redwell Basin, we are planning to drill a collection of deep shale wells starting in early October to provide ground-truthing for both surface and airborne geophysical data collection. Drilling of four monitoring boreholes (40-70m deep) will occur to (a) recover shale bedrock for geochemical analysis and (b) provide long term sampling ports for evaluating seasonal changes in groundwater elevation and chemistry.

Equally as important to geological constraints, we’re pursuing a drilling campaign that folds in other extant RMBL researchers from the perspective of biogeochemistry.

As an NC State postdoc, Amanda DelVecchia (amanda.delvecchia@gmail.com) — in order to study geologic methane contributions to contemporary food webs — will be installing five 2″ diameter, 2 mm slotted PVC wells to bedrock on the lower East River (our “Pumphouse” location) using a Geoprobe this October. As part of this work, Amanda will be collecting methane samples from these wells and others for submission to collaborator Dr. Daniel Stolper (UC Berkeley) for analysis of clumped isotopologues.

So we have a busy October in front of us insofar as drilling is concerned!

Lastly — and this is purely for the geology and geocentric folks on this list — I wanted to provide a link to a remarkable document. It fleshes out Ferdinand Hayden’s original geologic surveys for the state of Colorado including the East River watershed from the late 1800’s.

Building upon the shoulders of giants is what we do — and with Hayden laying the geologic framework for Yellowstone, I’d say he qualifies — I’m including the link below.

https://haydenslandscapes.com/part-iii-elks-and-west-elks/east-river-gothic

This is so well done and with a focus on the East River and its environs from the late 1800’s, it’s hard to overvalue it.

(A) We successfully completed the drilling of the second deep well (150-ft below grade) in Redwell Basin. As noted previously, we encountered artesian flow at 150-ft, which brought an end to further downward progress. Prior to open hole geophysical logging and well completion, Mike Wilkins (Colorado State Univ.), joined me to collect a “deep microbiome” filtered sample for metagenomics analysis. We were able to serially filter (1.2, 0.2, 0.1-um) ca. 26-L of groundwater from the artesian flow zone at 150-feet within a metal sulfide-rich portion of the formation. These filters are currently stored at -80C in Gothic and will be sent to Jill Banfield (UC Berkeley) once preparations are made. Mike and I discussed the possibility for temporal omic-sampling from this depth if completion strategies being pursued this week result in sampling infrastructure that will allow for it. Fingers crossed for that.

(B) We’ve had an extremely active two weeks of field work. In the field have been teams led by Audrey Sawyer (Ohio State) and Mike Wilkins (CSU) working at Pumphouse on hyporheic zone biogeochemistry, Marty Briggs (USGS) et al. investigating a diversity of surface water-groundwater interaction zones using UAV imaging and fluorescence tracer injections, and John Bargar (SLAC) whose SLAC SFA team continues to probe heavy metal accumulation in floodplain sediments and redox-mediated processes impacting its fate along the Slate River / Oh-Be-Joyful confluence zone.

(C) While I’ve previously introduced John and his project to the team, I did want to introduce folks to the work of Audrey and Mike at Pumphouse and Marty et al. at Oh-Be-Joyful (and beyond). These “Meet the Scientist” videos run their usual ca. 3-min length, and I hope you’ll take the chance to watch them to find out what your East River collaborators are up to of late.

(D) Lastly — and as I say hopefully without irony — it’s all over but for the crying at Old Rifle. While I still maintain a small but active research footprint there examining uranium remediation via hydroxyapatite formation, we’ve reached a critical inflection point for that site. The attached photos tell the story, and for that group of dedicated “Old Rifle” readers, you might better find a box of tissue. I can safely say that Old Rifle made my career and that of so many others on and off this email list. We created what is without question the world’s foremost subsurface microbial observatory and we — especially DOE-SC and DOE-LM — should be rightfully proud. To plagiarize from Friday Night Lights: “Rifle forever.”

Below is a virtual site visit from this past Thursday at our lower elevation drilling location in Redwell Basin:

Drilling has gone quite well, with ore mineralization very abundant. Indeed, cores recovered from a highly fractured / faulted location at depth show massive metal sulfide mineralization even given the considerable distance from the felsite intrusion. As with the higher elevation site (MW1) drilled last September, Andy Manning and Lyndsay Ball of the USGS are leading the scientific charge. For those unfamiliar, a previously-shared “Meet the Scientist” video presenting their research program in the Redwell Basin is below.

While we had hoped to achieve a total depth exceeding 300-ft, artesian flow upon reaching a high permeability zone at ca. 145-150-ft below grade has necessitated a halt to drilling. Andy and Lyndsay are working today to devise a strategy for isolating this high permeability / artesian zone such that it can be sampled and monitored in the future. Shallower, nested sampling ports will be installed using the same well completion approach used at MW1. Lastly, a shallow (ca. 15-ft depth) portion of the open hole is unstable and work today is geared towards setting a surface casing to maintain borehole integrity for the next week or so as a suite of open hole geophysical logging measurements are collected.

Once completed, the rig will move back uphill to the MW1 location and drill a shallow (ca. 30-ft) vadose zone / capillary fringe monitoring borehole that will enable our team to examine hydrogeochemical processes in this dynamic region. Conversations between Andy Manning and recently funded PI Danielle Rempe (Univ. Texas) at the 2018 DOE ESS PI Meeting inspired this new monitoring hole thus highlighting the great value in that meeting for catalyzing new and novel research plans.

Here in the Elk Mountains of Colorado it continues to be very warm with summer rainstorms beginning to some degree but as of yet not providing much relief for drought-stressed conditions. Soils are incredibly dry throughout the East River area and stream flows are getting very low with high water temperatures. A challenging summer for the plants and critters, I’m afraid.

New DOE University projects at East River announced
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has recently announced funding awards for six new university investigators working with Berkeley Lab and its myriad collaborators in the East River / Upper Gunnison. While some of these individuals have been or are currently working with us — some having previously presented to this group — others are new to the watershed and the project. We congratulate and welcome the contributions of the new scientists!

• Jeff Deems (CU Boulder) will utilize multi-scale, seasonal snowpack observations and modeling to more accurately account for water and solute storage and fluxes within the upper Gunnison basin.
• McKenzie Skiles (Univ. Utah) and Co-PI’s Janice Brahney (Utah State Univ.) and David Gochis (NCAR) will better constrain our physical understanding of aerosol loading, biogeochemistry, and snowmelt hydrology from hillslope to watershed scale within the East River watershed and its surrounding drainages.
  • Both projects will rely heavily on data collected by NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory and funded by the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
• Alejandro (Lejo) Flores (Boise State Univ.) and Co-PIs Rosemary Carroll (Desert Research Institute) and Haruko Wainwright (LBNL) will be working to advance our ability to accurately predict the spatiotemporal distribution of snow cover and water content across multiple scales by combining land-atmosphere models with operational, multi-satellite remote sensing data.
• Max Berkelhammer (Univ. Illinois, Chicago) and Co-PI Chris Still (Oregon State Univ.) will be installing a network of sapflow sensors and automated dendrometers that will be coupled with stable water isotope measurements to study subsurface hydrologic and physiological controls on transpiration across the East River watershed.
• Marco Keiluweit (Univ. Massachusetts) will be investigating the impact of plant root-mediated organic matter mobilization on soil carbon loss and nutrient export in mountainous watersheds, with a focus on the East River.
• Lee Liberty (Boise State Univ.) will be working with Berkeley Lab collaborators to utilize scale-dependent seismic imaging to estimate regolith, rock and fluid distributions in association with upcoming and planned drilling activities in the greater East River watershed.

A quick note to new scientists engaging in field work at East River: Prior to undertaking field research (i.e., ground-based work), please reach out to Dr. Jennie Reithel (jreithel@gmail.com), the Science Director at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab (RMBL). Jennie is the primary point of contact for facilitating research activities within the greater watershed to ensure seamless integration with other RMBL scientists. She and I will work closely to ensure that your work is integrated into the existing Special Use Permits issued to RMBL and Berkeley Lab by the U.S. Forest Service.

Upcoming drilling in the Redwell Basin
Drilling of the lower elevation monitoring well (MW2) will begin the week of July 16th, 2018. This work will involve continuous coring to a depth of ca. 300-350 feet with an expectation of collecting samples from both the Cretaceous Mesa Verde formation and the underlying Mancos Shale. As with last year’s drilling at well MW1, this work will include downhole packer testing for vertically resolved estimates of hydraulic conductivity, open hole borehole geophysical logging, and multi-depth completions for sampling groundwater at discrete depths. For those who will be in the watershed during that week and have an interest in observing the activity, please correspond with myself and/or the USGS leads: Andy Manning (amanning@usgs.gov) and Lyndsay Ball (lbball@usgs.gov).

The impacts of the low snowpack year and very dry late spring / summer are especially evident up in the Redwell Basin. The below photo looking toward the new MW2 drilling site (center of the photo) illustrates just how little snowmelt and groundwater discharge we’re seeing this year as compared to most ‘average’ years.

Speaking of MW1, below are two virtual site visits of that location assessing the impact of a large avalanche that cut loose in the Redwell Basin this past winter.

June 21, 2018

July 2, 2018

NEON Airborne Observation Platform and “Meet the Scientist: Kate Maher”
Kate will be providing a more detailed update on the work and next steps as part of the July 17th Watershed Science Community Call. That said, a virtual site visit of some ground-based sampling is in order, as is a related “Meet the Scientist” video featuring Dr. Kate Maher.

NEON sampling

Meet the Scientist: Kate Maher