Land & Environment

USU Scientists Lend Expertise to Colorado River Restoration Project

Beginning March 5, Utah State University scientists will take part in a third attempt to determine if waters released from Glen Canyon Dam can emulate spring floods and restore the natural ecosystem of the Grand Canyon’s Colorado River.

Nearly 30 million people in the southwestern United States depend on the life-sustaining and electricity-producing waters of the much-diverted Colorado that has its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. Yet manmade structures have altered the 1,500-mile waterway, which flows southwesterly to the Gulf of California, and threaten some of the Southwest’s most celebrated natural resources.
 
U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is expected this week to announce his department’s final approval of the high-flow experiment that will send some 41,000 cubic feet of water per second gushing from the dam for 60 hours. The concrete arch dam, which created Lake Powell, is located about 15 miles upstream from Lee’s Ferry, where the river enters Grand Canyon National Park.
 
USU Watershed Sciences professor Jack Schmidt, who serves as a contracted science advisor on the project, says the experiment will provide further information on whether higher flows can rebuild eroded beaches downstream of the dam by moving sediment accumulated in the river bed onto sandbars.
 
Trapping of sediment behind Glen Canyon Dam since its construction in 1963 has hampered natural replenishment of sandbars, which provide vital habitat for native fish species and plant life, says Schmidt, who assisted with the planning of the previous 1996 and 2004 flood experiments.
 
Three species of native fish have already disappeared from the river, and another, Gila cypha – better known by its less elegant common name – the humpback chub, is endangered.
 
USU geology alum Paul Grams MS’97, who is wrapping up a two-year postdoctoral stint with Schmidt, was recently hired as physical science and modeling program manager with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center in Flagstaff, Ariz. The center is working collaboratively with the Bureau of Reclamation and other federal agencies to conduct the high-flow experiment. Established in 1995 as a key component of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program, the center conducts scientific activities aimed at meeting requirements mandated by the 1992 Grand Canyon Protection Act.
 
Grams, who is overseeing much of the center’s research in sediment transport and geomorphology, is leading a project during the experimental flood to measure sandbar response at about 60 research sites along the river and determine how high-flow conditions affect backwater habitat for the imperiled chub.
 
Looking back, Schmidt describes the first controlled flood experiment, conducted in1996, as an “ambiguous success.” The flood failed to build sandbars to sufficiently large size, he says, primarily because insufficient sediment was available on the river bed to be redistributed into eddies.
 
“The experiment, however, yielded essential scientific data that changed how we now think about river processes and the potential for restoration,” he says.
 
The second attempt, in 2004, built sandbars but only in the first 30 miles downstream from the dam. The scientists hope that this year’s experiment, timed with higher than usual sediment accumulation from recent tributary floods, will rebuild sandbars over an even longer reach downstream.
 
The third attempt could reveal the need for a regular schedule of flooding to restore habitat, but such a requirement could place additional constraints on the dam’s hydroelectric power generation activities, Grams says.
 
The only alternative to planned floods, Schmidt says, is construction of a costly sediment pipeline to deliver sediment around the dam.
 
Grams and Schmidt will ride the flood wave on rafts at different points on the river during the experiment. Schmidt begins his journey at Lee’s Ferry, designated as Grand Canyon’s River Mile 0, and will travel nearly 88 river miles to Phantom Ranch. Grams sets off from Phantom Ranch traveling approximately 188 river miles to Lake Mead.
 
Two USU doctoral students are also assisting with the March project. Quinney Fellow Susannah Erwin will spend two weeks measuring suspended sediment before, during and after the flood, while stationed with two USGS scientists at National Canyon, River Mile 166.
 
Utah State visiting scholar Milada Majerova, a doctoral candidate at Slovakia’s Technical University in Zvolen, will spend about a month as part of an 11-member USGS team surveying the river’s backwater habitat.
 
“I’ll be with about seven scientists and four boatmen who will survey two to three sites per day along the river,” says Majerova, who just returned from a 19-day trip surveying sites in preparation for the flood. “We stay in tents along the river – it’s a real expedition.”
 
“It’s kind of like ‘Survivor,’” quips Erwin, a USU Water Fellow. One doesn’t want to be voted off the camping beach, especially when emergency help to remote research sites can only be summoned by satellite phone.
 
“It will be a unique opportunity to witness the experiment, she says. 
 
Related links:
 
Contact: John C. “Jack” Schmidt [jack.schmidt@usu.edu], 435-797-1791
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto [maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu], 435-797-3517
water release from Glen Canyon Dam

Water gushes from bypass tubes of Glen Canyon Dam during the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's 2004 high flow-experiment. A similar experiment, the third attempted, begins March 5. Courtesy Dale Blank, USGS.

muddy water mixing with clear water in Colorado River

In a recent photo, muddy flood waters from the Paria River mix with the Colorado River's clear waters. Glen Canyon Dam traps sediment in Lake Powell that, before the dam’s construction, nourished the river’s habitat. Courtesy Scott A. Wright, USGS.

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