 Hi, I'm John Stednick, professor and program leader of Watershed Science at Colorado State University. This session is on hydrologic processes, continuing segment in the understanding of the landscape. The lecture objectives for you today is to increase your knowledge and understanding of the hydrologic cycle and the hydrologic processes. To increase your knowledge and understanding of stream flow characteristics and the channel forms and functions. And to have you understand the relation between the channel form and function and the stream flow generation as related to the landscape. Let's start with the definition of hydrology. Hydrology is an earth science. It encompasses the occurrence, distribution, movement and properties of the water of the earth and their environmental relationships. The hydrologic cycle as seen here is a portrayal of the movement of water from the atmosphere to the land to the stream back to the atmosphere. What we'll do is look at the hydrologic cycle in a simple mass balance equation. Here, q as symbolically representing the stream flow is equal to the precipitation minus interception, minus evaporation, minus transpiration, plus or minus the change in storage. Plus or minus the storage being mostly in groundwater conditions. So let's look at each of these individual components. Precipitation is really variable in time and space. And that distribution and that timing is going to be very much influencing the type of watershed and the type of stream flow that we'll see. Precipitation can occur in many different types of forms, but again we'll have several types of measurements that are universal in all precipitation events. Precipitation can be measured as a depth, just as inches or millimeters related per individual storm per month or per year. We can also measure precipitation as an intensity, so many inches or millimeters per hour. And those values then or those rates of precipitation can help determine what kind of watershed and stream flow we'll get. There are several different types of precipitation and each of these types of precipitation can result in different types of storm or stream flow responses. Rainfall usually occurs in two different forms. One in a frontal system and one in a thunderstorm. A frontal system has low intensity and long duration. They tend to cover large areas and are slow moving. Thunderstorms on the other hand are spatially variable, often spatially isolated, have high intensity and relatively short duration. Snowfall, snowfall particularly with the higher latitudes as well as higher elevations will tend to accumulate through the snow or through the winter period. In transitional snow zones or areas that we might have warm snow, we can have snow mixed with rain or rain on snow events. There are other types of precipitation, hail, sleet, or fog interception, which is considered important in certain coastal environments, that may result in contribution to the land but may not result in a stream flow generation. Annual precipitation is going to be a function of both the atmospheric water source or the availability of water. So as seen in this figure, you'll see the increased precipitation quite often is going to be near the coast where there's a large water, the oceans where there's a large source of water for evaporation. It'll be influenced by topography and the dominant winds and pressure systems. And again in this figure you can see that the orographic lifting, or that is the increase in precipitation, is often associated with an increase in elevation. Increases in precipitation usually are going to result in an increase in vegetation, and the vegetation and its role in the hydrologic cycle will be examined. Annual precipitation will be a general characteristic for the environment that we're interested in, but at times we'll be interested in a specific storm. And with the addition of radar, we can look at storm radar for individual storms. These could be high intensity or long duration or very localized storms, but we'd be able to get real time data on the precipitation from these radar. So looking at the hydrologic cycle, this again is a characterization of the processes that we're going to be looking at. So we've got our precipitation coming in into the land. Where does it go from there? Well, one of the first losses of precipitation is by interception. Interception is basically when precipitation is captured or caught or retained by the vegetation, including the overstory, the understory, and the litter, or forest duff, or rangeland duff. And it could also be included in part of the surface roughness as part of the detention storage. The interception is an important component because as rain falls, it has a fairly high kinetic energy, depending upon the particle size and the intensity. But the interception of that precipitation allows the vegetation to capture that kinetic energy. So the rain falls that does reach the forest floor or the range floor will then have the opportunity to infiltrate. Two other losses of precipitation are through evaporation and transpiration. We can have evaporation of the water that's been intercepted by the vegetation. Interception of snow is a significant loss of precipitation. The snow is able to sublimate, that is, it goes directly from a solid into the vapor phase. If it were to pass through the liquid phase, it might be able to fall to the forest floor, but going from the solid to the vapor phase, it's lost. Precipitation as rain, equally intercepted, can be lost directly by evaporation. Transpiration, of course, is going to be the water that's going to use by the vegetation on site. We usually combine the evaporation and transpiration term into a single term called evapotranspiration. And for the most part, evapotranspiration rates will be a function of temperature. There are considerations that we'd have to make for soil moisture, but for the most part, temperature is going to be the dominant factor. In this figure, looking at temperature from last year across the United States, the continental United States, you see that temperature really is more of a function of latitude, although the effects of elevation cannot be discounted. It's not as significant as latitude. So, again, looking at our precipitation in the hydrologic cycle and looking at the interception, transpiration, and evaporation, we now need to move that soil or the need to move the precipitation into the soil. This process of water moving through the air-soil interface is called infiltration. Infiltration is also measured as a rate, millimeters or inches per hour. Infiltration rates generally decrease over time. As the soil moisture increases, the soil colloids, the soil organic material, tends to hydrate or expand, decreasing the pore size. That pore size decreasing will decrease the rate of water that being able to move in. So, soil texture, soil organic material, and to a certain extent the amount of litter that might be present on the soil will all affect the infiltration. Here's an example of two different soil types, looking at the effects of water entering the soil at this point and then moving vertically. In the sandy loam, you see that the dominant direction is vertically. The soil has fairly high porosity, fairly large particles, so there's very little capillary tension to be able to pull the soil moisture laterally. Conversely, in the clay loam, we see that there's a very significant component of horizontal migration or horizontal movement of water because of the higher capillary tension. The soils on a watershed and the subsequent movement of water in those soils very much will dictate the type of stream flow, both in terms of the quantity and quality that we might receive. In this figure, we'll see an example of an infiltration rate. Usually infiltration rates start quite high, but then over time they will decrease because like was mentioned earlier, we increase the soil moisture, we increase the hydration or the hydrate the colloids and decrease the pore size. At the asthmatope here on the figure is what we refer to as the infiltration capacity. This is the conservative or a conservative estimate of what that soil is capable of. Because soil conditions or soil moisture conditions can vary over time, infiltration rates have to come to some equilibrium. That's why we use infiltration capacity. Again, going back to the hydrologic cycle, we'll now look at how this soil moisture can become stream flow. Well, there's three really dominant types or major types of streams that occur. Perennial, which is a stream flow or a stream that is able to have stream flow all year. It's going to be an environment where there's a large or high precipitation. It may be an environment where there's soils that are able to retain enough of that moisture to slowly release it to be able to generate stream flow over a period of time. Intermittent streams are either snow melt or spring when there's wet periods and will just flow during those periods of time. It might be a period of months. The intermittent streams, again, might reflect watershed conditions where we have either shallower soils or soils that aren't able to retain moisture like we have in perennial systems, or it might be a small watershed and there isn't enough soil moisture volume to be able to sustain stream flow over time. Finally, there's ephemeral. Ephemeral stream is something we'd probably find in a desert type environment. It basically responds to individual precipitation events, and they tend to be rain-driven, thunderstorm activity. So again, because we have fairly shallow soils or very coarse-textured soils that are not able to retain that moisture, the soil moisture quickly migrates through the system and is expressed as stream flow. So what are the factors that influence stream flow? Well, there's several. Precipitation, timing and distribution, as we talked about earlier, temperature, which is a long term, but the precipitation and temperature are going to be manifest in the vegetative cover. And that vegetative cover is also going to be a function of what the watershed slope is and the type of soils that are present. All of these then will result in some sort of expression of stream flow. Probably the most common form of stream flow or storm flow generation that we're familiar with is referred to as overland flow or Hortonian flow. Overland flow occurs when the precipitation intensity is greater than the infiltration capacity. So the rate of movement into the water or the rate of movement of water into the soil is greater than what the soil can handle. So that excess precipitation is then passed over the soil surface, which might result in real erosion and associated soil erosion. That erosion could be significant if we're close to the stream. The other types of stream flow, though, tend to be when we do have infiltration. And in this figure, you can see that we have a vertical migration or infiltration of water, but then we have a lateral migration of soil water because of either some sort of bedrock control or hydrologically restricting border. As we move laterally down the slope, the soil moisture increases to the point where it's saturated and will contribute to the surface expression of water. That surface expression of water, of course, is stream flow. In a plan view, you can see the contributing area of the watershed increases because we increase the stream flow. More and more of the watershed area is contributing directly to the stream flow because of the soil water migration. This concept is called the variable source area. And the variable source area is an important consideration when we look at land management activities. If we were to do a land management activity within the riparian area, it would be in close proximity to a variable source area, a source area of stream flow. So that might have a potential to directly affect the water resources. Conversely, if we were in an area mid-slope or on the ridge, because of the distance and because of the hydrologic disconnectedness, it probably would not have an effect on the stream flow or on the watershed and in a hole. How do we measure discharge? Well, discharge is easily measured by looking at the cross-sectional area of a stream, looking at the width times the depth and in measuring velocity. We have width and feet, depth and feet, and velocity in feet per second to come up with a unit of cubic feet per second. The water year is a measurement of stream flow over a calendar year. The hydrograph or the water year starts on October 1 and ends the 30th of September. The U.S. Geological Survey was one of the first federal agencies to start stream flow measurement. The start of the water year does not reflect the water balance position or anything. It's a reflection of when the original fiscal year was for the United States. A point of caution is that stream flow starts on October 1. Rainfall records and temperature records start on January 1, so you do have to do some data manipulation. In this figure, we'll see an individual storm or individual stream flow response to a precipitation event. At this point, we have base flow. This is basically a groundwater contribution or soil water contribution to the stream flow. As the precipitation event occurs, as portrayed here, we then get an increase in the stream flow. So we have a rising limb, a peak discharge rate, a falling limb, and then back to a base flow condition. There is a number of graphical ways that we can separate the storm flow from the base flow conditions as well. And again, the hydrograph is time on the bottom axis and stream flow on the y-axis. The stream flow is a rate, cubic feet per second. So by looking at cubic feet per second, dividing it by the time, we can actually calculate the volume of precipitation or volume of stream flow that came off this storm. You can look at the volume of storm flow or stream flow from an individual event by dividing it by the volume of precipitation of that event. So on the common watershed area, you look at the precipitation in that area to come up with the volume. So the volume of storm flow or stream flow divided by the volume of precipitation can give you a measure of water yield efficiency. Stream gauging is probably one of the easiest things to do. What we'll do is look at a section where we have a natural control, some sort of bedrock expression or something in the substrate that would be able to force the water to the surface where we can measure properly the depth and the velocity. If we were to look at a stream with large cobbles, large boulders, what we'd find is that there'd probably be a fair amount of flow around and under those boulders, so we'd probably miss that flow. So in a natural control, we'd try and look at for something to be able to bring all that water up to the soil surface. What we'll do is go to these sections or control points and put in a staff gauge. A staff gauge is just a measure of the water depth or height of the water above an artificial data. We'll take and correlate a stage height with a discharge rate. So after a period of measurements or several measurements of stage and discharge, we can develop a stage-discharge relationship. So the stage-discharge relationship, then, we can go out and just measure the stage or record the stage and actually calculate the stream flow. And if we want to, we can go to an artificial control. This is an example of a V-notch weir. A V-notch weir is basically an engineered structure, and what we'll have is a geometric function of the depth or the stage of the water flowing across the weir. And so, again, because of these geometric expressions, it's very easy to measure the stage and then be able to predict the stream flow. In the background, you can see the stage recorder, and it, again, is not measuring stream flow, it's just measuring stage. Another example is the partial flume. The partial flume was designed here at Colorado State University. A flume is different than a weir. A flume has a constriction where the water accelerates through what's referred to as the throat. But, again, the same principle occurs is that you'll see the technician working on the stage recorder. The flume has, is designed and has an existing equation where we can look at the stage and relate it to the stream flow rate. Well, if we look at stream flow over a period of time, we can see different patterns or different trends that might become evident. One of the biggest differences or common differences that we can see is the relation or difference between a rainfall-driven and a snow-melt hydrograph. In this figure from western Oregon, you can see that the annual hydrograph, including October 1st, ending 30th of September, plotted for discharge. We have many peaks or several peaks that occur during the winter months. In western Oregon, we get frequent winter storms. Those winter storms then will respond as individual storm events. Later in the spring and into the summer, with less precipitation, the watershed draws down or has less stream flow, and that stream flow here would be represented as the base flow. Conversely, in this figure, we have a snow-melt-driven hydrograph. The snow-melt-driven hydrograph is from a watershed that receives the bulk of its precipitation as snow during the winter months. That snow is not going to melt until the spring. So we have very low flows during the winter months. Once the air temperature warms up, that snow starts to melt, then we can increase the stream flow, usually peaking as a unimodal storm that is one peak per year and then going back to a recession or base flow. There are many stream gauging programs that include real-time as well as historical data. Many of those are run both at the national and state level and really provide a lot of data that can be used for a number of different purposes. This is a U.S. Geological Survey stream gauging station that is part of the National Water Information System, or NWIS. The states and the federal government both have been cooperating by putting a number of gauging stations online. So you can actually download the real-time data as well as the historical data from the station. So this station is the Kashlaputa River at Fort Collins. And by looking at this download from the web, we can see that there was a significant change in flow that happened about three days ago, and then we see the die-yield variation in stream flow here. That change or that change in the hydrograph is actually a result of hydrologic modification or flow diversion. Each state working with the USGS has these online. Here you can see the antenna. The antenna usually either go to a telephone system or to a satellite system. So again, you can get real-time information. One of the assignments for this segment will be to download a stream gauging station near your home and develop the annual hydrograph. Well, what can we use that data for? Probably one of the greatest utilities of stream flow data other than determining how much water really is available is to develop a flow duration curve. A flow duration curve usually is going to be a plot of some sort of probability of an exceedance of a peak flow or probability of an occurrence of a flow lower than what the data record would suggest. The flow duration curves can be used for channel maintenance or perhaps riparian vegetation maintenance. Flow duration curves now are being looked at in terms of wetland maintenance and even some of the development of wetlands. The flow duration curves can be used for sediment transport but probably more importantly and more recently, the flow duration curves are being used to look at aquatic habitat models, both for fish and other organisms that would be dependent upon those water resources. The habitat suitability indices and other in-stream flow type models can be used with the flow duration curve. So, what's the take-home message? Well, in water resources management, we tend to manage for stream flow or the stream flow yield. What we need to do is remember that there's a host of other things other than the stream flow that we might be interested in. We can look at the hydrologic cycle and these individual components of the hydrologic cycle through chemistry and we can actually discern or develop nutrient or biogeochemical loads or fluxes through the system. This wasn't that important until we had greater or increased atmospheric inputs from different anthropogenic sources and again, I think what we're seeing is a lot of movement to increased water quality sampling. There's also an increased emphasis on riparian wetland vegetation maintenance. I think with the understanding and appreciation of the both biological and chemical functions of riparian and wetlands, we're going to see an increased emphasis or continued emphasis in that arena. And then finally, more and more management decisions are being based upon what aquatic species may be present or desirable in those conditions or in those watersheds. In stream channels, the stream channels are responding to long-term influences of climate, the geology, and the vegetation. And what we'll see is that these streams have evolved over a period of time and they represent a certain equilibrium between those factors and how they've developed over time. With management activities, as well as water diversions, we're now tending to start to disconnect the water from the land. Either that or we're, by hydrologic modification, taking water out of one basin and perhaps putting it into another basin. So are these systems at equilibrium? What's going to happen to these as we do our different land use management activities? So here's an example of a watershed that has no riparian area. The stream is down cut and it's essentially disconnected the riparian community and the upland vegetation from the stream water. Part of it is due to stream flow diversions. Conversely, in this setting, what we'll see is a almost luxuriant stream-side vegetation because the stream flow in the channel has got a good linkage with the vegetation and the near-soil surface soils to be able to provide the moisture necessary for those riparian communities. Channel forms, though, can and do have very quick responses to different types of management activities. Again, the evolution over a period of time in the natural state is an equilibrium. But with perturbation by human activities, we may have a graphic, if not dramatic and quick change in the channel form and function. One of the easiest things to look at would be just the amount of erosion that is occurring in the watershed. Sediments and stream flow modification or hydrologic modification still seem to be the largest two components that we need to address. Soil erosion can be looked at by the universal soil loss equation or the revised universal soil loss equation. Now, the universal soil loss equation was originally designed, originally developed from many years of data from cornfield plots and looking at the vegetative cover of corn on soil erosion. I agree that it's not very accurate, but it's wonderfully precise. Individuals can go out and measure soil erosion or estimate soil erosion with a reproducible value. So the importance is that we can evaluate the differences in different land use activities or land covers and do it precisely. And again, it may not be accurate, but the important thing is that we have a basis for comparison. The delivery of eroded materials to streams is basically going to produce sediment. And sediment, for the most part, every stream carries a certain amount of sediment already. Because again, we've developed a system in the geology and the soils that are present in the watershed. So there is no stream that carries no sediment. And I don't mean that as a double negative. But the sediment movement is often episodic. What we'll find is that there's going to be certain stream flow conditions or certain periods in the hydrograph, the annual hydrograph, where we'll have sediment movement. Most of the sediment movement or a lot of the sediment movement in a channel is from in-channel sources. So if there are storm conditions or bank flow conditions, we might be able to move or can move that sediment that's stored in the channel or increase the amount of bank erosion. But there are off-channel sources of sediment. And again, that hydrologic connectivity, as we've demonstrated in the variable source area, if we have soil erosion with that hydraulic connectivity, we'll probably increase the amount of sediment that's in the channel. There are essentially three different types of our classes of sediment movement in wildland settings. The first is suspended sediment. Suspended sediment is that material that is fully suspended by the stream turbulence or the stream energy. The suspended sediment is often measured as surrogately with turbidity. And turbidity is simply the optical property that water is able to diffract light. Turbidity is a state standard. And as land managers, it's responsible to meet state water quality standards. So turbidity is something that we should be of interest or concerned with. The second one is saltation load. And a saltation load is really a movement of sediment by the stream, but there's insufficient stream energy or stream power to fully suspend that material. So that material tends to saltate or bounce along the stream bottom. It may be partially suspended for a period of time, but then falls, hits the stream bottom and then is resuspended. It's a very difficult type of sediment movement to sample. Finally, there's bed load. Bed load is the large material that is so large that it cannot be suspended by the stream, and it tends to move along the stream bottom. Again, bed load is a difficult parameter to measure, but there are things that can be done. So again, what we'll do is we'll look at the potential or the different ways to be able to look at the sediment. What we'll do is we can look at the amount of sediment that we have moving through the transport system. We can determine through an energy particle size graph such as this what type of particles might move or what size particles might move given the type or stream power that we have present. In this graph, notice that the clay, which is a very fine soil particle does not move easily, because again, the angular, the structure has a tendency to interlock, and really it's the silt moving into the fine sand and medium sand that are most transportable, and then we go to gravels and into pebbles, cobbles, and boulders we're decreasing the transport capability. But there's another way to be able to assess the effects of sediment transport, and that is to look at the sediment deposits. There's a number of different metrics that can be used. Sediments or bed load sampling that we have to do during the high flow conditions. There are questions about safety, there are questions about being out in the stream in the middle of night. If you're a graduate student, you'd be expected to do that, but as a professional you're not. The sediment deposition though can be easily measured during low flow conditions. What we can do is look at the degree of imbrication or packing or sorting or preferential particle sorting of the sediments in the stream bottom. A number of different metrics to look at the type of shingling as it were. This is important both in terms of channel stability but also in terms of channel habitat, particularly for different types of cell monads. We can actually go in and do a particle size distribution. There's a number of statistics that can be used looking at the mean particle size, the d50, or looking at the ratio of the d84 to d16. But again what we'll do is a particle size distribution and come up with a particle fractionation based upon the particles that are present. Another potential way is to do a biological assessment. Either macroinvertebrates or with aquatic species. Macroinvertebrates are quite variable. They're quite variable in space. They're quite variable in time and they may not be the best measure but in terms of point comparisons at one point in time I think they're quite adequate. The aquatic habitat what's interesting about habitat assessments is that you can have a habitat assessment without that specific species present. So again that's one way that we could probably assess or determine the effects of different sediment deposition. So again the channels themselves have always carried sediments. Different management activities may affect that because we can have a short term or fairly quick response to that. Some of those activities would include just the management activities that we have to increase the amount of runoff. We increase the peak flows that might occur. We decrease the low flows. If we have a shift in the flow duration curve that could definitely translate into a shift into the sediment transport capability. One of the biggest concerns or one of the biggest issues that's becoming an issue in America and Southwest in particular is flow diversions where streams are dewatered, where water is taking out of the stream and putting it into another stream. So what is the effect of dewatering on one stream in terms of sediment transport versus adding additional water to another stream and the increased peak flow there? In channel changes may translate to watershed, terrestrial and biological changes that I think we've had a tendency to disconnect the land or disconnect the water from the land and we have to be careful of that. So I think one of the easiest measurements or the easiest assessments that we can do at a watershed level is to look at the riparian condition. The riparian is the transitional zone between aquatic and terrestrial ecotypes. It's literally the vegetation on the fringe of the stream that represents the transition between the upslope, terrestrial vegetation and soils versus the stream and the aquatic environment. The riparian condition can be assessed with the three criteria that we use for wetlands, the vegetation the soils and the hydrology. The vegetation is usually going to be an indicative of soils that have a high moisture holding capacity or saturated. The soils are going to be wet. They don't have to demonstrate the typical diagnostic criteria for hydric, but they are wet. We might potentially have a bling. The hydrology is the water table or the stream flow at or near that soil surface to be able to maintain that vegetation. One of the biggest advances, I think, is the coupling or the coordination with the Forest Service, with the Bureau of Land Management with help from NRCS to develop the proper functioning condition which is an evaluation of the riparian setting based upon these diagnostic criteria of soils, vegetation and hydrology. It's an interdisciplinary approach. It's meant to be where people go out in the field and assess that riparian condition and be able to discuss it. Is there a recruitment of vegetation? Is the channel stable? So it's a very good assessment. It's not data intensive at all, but the thing is that it's a very good and easy measurement and again it's going to provide a basis for reproducibility in space. Here is an example of the proper functioning condition as defined by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. Here you see the stream channel which is truly in communication or connected to the stream side vegetation. It's reflective of a hydric condition or high moisture availability but as the channel down cuts and that channel down cutting can be from water diversion, it could be from management activity, it could be from any sort of perturbation in that system but what you notice is that the water table is starting to be pulled down because the surface elevation of the saturated zone or stream flow is also lowering and over time it evolves to a point where there is no connection between the surrounding vegetation and we've gone from a very mesic condition into almost a semi-arid condition. So one of the considerations I would like to propose is that we use the proper functioning condition or other riparian assessment to assess the watershed health. It's an interdisciplinary approach it gets people in the field and it gets people talking to each other. It's a straightforward evaluation and like I said earlier there's minimal data in the selection. So what have I hoped that you've learned from this lecture? Well I think you should know the system hydrology, the peak flows, the low flows the ability to develop a flow duration curve. I want you to know what the desired outcome is from your management activities. I think there's a lot to be said for water quality management objectives and I think there's a lot to be said for trustual and aquatic species as desired outcomes. I want to connect the system that if we work on the impaired or at risk systems first we're much likely better to be able to affect a change. Those systems that are dramatically or drastically affected I think will be hard pressed to be able to recover. So the final thoughts physical processes create the template for all the biological processes. Any resource management is watershed management. If you're out there managing for range, for your cattle what you want to do is for the cattle is the best. So proper grazing schedule, proper salt locations, water locations well what that is is watershed management. Your management of that cattle herd is really the watershed management. So any resource management is watershed management. Water and water related resources should be included in all land management plans. It's not it's just not a byproduct that the watershed is the integration of all these processes and if we measure at the watershed level those are the sorts of outcomes that we'll be able to determine. And finally any restoration work or any improvements in watershed have to understand or have to include the hydraulic functions that occurred in that watershed and how those functions have to be restored. The hydrologic functions have to be restored before any other restoration work could be successful. We're here in one of my favorite watersheds, the little southpork of the Kashlaputa River. The watershed here is going to illustrate a couple of points. The first is that the biological processes are essentially controlled by the physical template. And again what I want to emphasize is precipitation and temperature. Here we've got precipitation accumulating as snow in the mountains with the low temperatures it's not going to melt. So even though we have high precipitation, low temperatures we're going to have low stream flows. There's a snowpack accumulates, then we'll get the spring snow melt. The other thing is that you'll see that there's an increase in snowpack accumulation with an increase in elevation. Similarly there'll be a decrease in temperature with the increase in elevation. So those physical processes really are, or the physical template is really going to dictate what the biological processes are going to occur. The other thing about this watershed is that there's multiple ownership. The alpine area is owned by us, we're as part of the United States, but it's managed by the National Park Service. The National Park Service goal is to preserve certain types of ecosystems so that alpine is preserved in the Rocky Mountain National Park. The elevation or moving down in elevation we have National Forest Service Land. That National Forest Service Land also includes wilderness areas, which has similar management as the Park Service although there are some additional liberties. The other management in the National Forest Service Land is for National Forest Systems which would include timber harvesting, grazing, and other types of recreation, so multiple management. As we come down in elevation further, we run into both state property which is part of Colorado State University with our summer field program here at Pingree Park, but we also run into private property just private property in holdings where there's recreational camons that used on a seasonal basis. One thing of note here is that the water is essentially all been claimed by front range cities. Under the prior appropriation doctrine the water was claimed in the 1870s. So here we have a real good example of where the water has been disconnected from the land with the downstream diversions. But before we look at that diversion let's look at the stream flow. One of the things that I want you to consider and remember is the passage of precipitation through the ecosystem. That includes the vegetation and the soils. The rate and the timing of the movement of precipitation through the soils and the vegetation will really dictate the water quality and water quantity, the timing of stream flow. If we have an air shed or an area or a water shed that's going to be influenced by urbanization or industrialization we might have atmospheric inputs that could have a big effect on our water quality. Those inputs typically are manifest with low pH that is high acidity and associated nutrients be it nitrogen or sulfur compounds. And again for a long time we felt that wildlands were immune from these sorts of inputs but indeed they're not. So with the different management activities there's different goals for each of those. So how do we recognize other properties? How do we recognize other stakeholders in that water shed? One of the things that I would submit is that the management of any land should be done on a water shed basis. Let's take for example the 1997 hourglass wildfire. That wildfire certainly didn't recognize property boundaries in the areas that it burned. So I'd submit to you when we look at management activities that we look at those on a water shed level. Not just on the individual ownership of your property or the individual stand or the individual range allotment but to take the water shed as a whole and use that as an integrator of all the processes and activities that are occurring there. The effects of this fire were significant on site but yet the water quality and stream flow responses were very negligible. It was difficult to assess an effect of this wildfire. So again if we use the water shed level or the water shed scale it's going to be much easier to address those land management activity impacts on soil and water resources. The hourglass wildfire actually occurred during a summer session when Pingree Park students were present. The students were evacuated because there was a chance we were going to lose camp. After return though it afforded us the opportunity to look at the effects of this wildfire on soil and water erosions immediately after the fire. Not surprising with the loss of the forest overstory subordinate vegetation and litter layer we had quite a bit of overland flow. Some of it was the result of hydrophobicity that is the water or the soils actually became water repellent. Part of it was because we lost the infiltration rates and we had overland flow generation because of a decreased infiltration rate. The erosion on a plot level was actually quite significant. Similarly ash movement and nutrient movement off the plots was also significant. So how can something be significant at the plot level but not at the watershed level? One of the things that really was fortunate for the wildfire was that the riparian vegetation that is the vegetation that represents the interface between the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem was essentially undisturbed. Here in the background is a willow community that represents a very healthy riparian condition. The riparian condition here is because the high water table as the water table is at or near the soil surface for an extended period of time and the topography affords a very large expanse of that riparian area. So any overland flow or any flows that might be carrying sediment from the fire would basically reach a tortuous path. That tortuous path then would slow the velocity of the water allowing the settlement and the nutrients to settle out. The riparian area in this condition or this site is in very good condition because it has young or multi-aged level of vegetation. That is there's older vegetation but there's regeneration of the younger vegetation to replace the older vegetation. And again as we talked about in the classroom the riparian vegetation is going to provide a multitude of functions at the watershed level. Here we are further down to the Cottonwood Gallery. Cottonwood Forest is probably one of the most characteristic types of riparian vegetation that we're used to. The riparian vegetation here is like the willow that we saw up at Pingri Park dependent upon the soil moisture the soils themselves and the vegetation is a reflection of that riparian condition. Also further down here and again the grass is very effective in minimizing any non-point source pollution to the river. At Pingri Park we talked about the effects of the wildfire on water quality. One of the things to keep in mind is the location of the activity in the watershed. If we can hydrologically disconnect that activity from the stream then that really is a best management practice and will be effective in minimizing that non-point source pollution. The Kashlaputa River here experiences quite a change in stage over the period of a year. We're in low flow conditions here but with the summer snow melt we'll actually get to the point of near bank if not over bank flow. This is going to have a very pronounced effect on the type of substrate that might be present. In the background you can see some rather large cobbles but again with particle size counting or with some sort of size fractionation of those we'll be able to determine the sediment size and compare it in time and space to further integrate the effects of upstream management activities on the stream channel form and function. So remember, any location of land use activity or restoration project should consider its location in the watershed. If we can hydrologically disconnect it from the stream we'll have a minimum effect on the water resources. Also, if we can maintain or improve the riparian vegetation our goal is to achieve a proper functioning condition of the riparian vegetation because it too will help ameliorate or attenuate any water quality effects. Remember, any resource management is essentially watershed management so what's good for your resource is good for the water.