High Energy

Setting up stream gauging at the Gold River site has been challenging. The stream is very high-energy and not a good site for a traditional post with gauge and PVC tube stilling well. the budget does not allow for a creekside well gauge as WSC typically uses. So, we had to get creative.

I brought my Bosch Annihilator powerdrill along and after some searching, found a relatively vertical rock face to bolt a 1.8m steel ruler to to serve as a staff gauge. Whether it will last through the winter storms in questionable, I am looking forwards to seeing if it can withstand high water loaded with moving boulders and LWD.

Next up was the installation of the pressure transducer and again it was bolting time. We took a small boulder, placed a bolt and zap-strapped the transducer to the bolt. Then I put the whole mess in the creek in a pool sheltered behind a bedrock section of the channel and built a little hutch of other small boulders around it and capped with a large flat rock. Hopefully it will be protected there. If not, we have a backup transducer ready to install.

Finally we did some salt dilution gauging. There are a lot of pools so this was challenging. First test, with 1 kg of salt over 35m of channel, got a conductivity peak of 90 μs/cm after 10 minutes or so and had not returned to background levels after 40 minutes. Second trial, with 2kg of salt over 15m of channel, got a peak of over 400 μs/cm and was back almost to background after 20 min.

On The Feeling of Being Transported Sediment

Scott Weston and I rented wetsuits and swam down Norrish Creek's lower canyon, between the two stream gauges. Although it was a fun trip the research goal was to identify sediment sources in the lower canyon and to determine if the lower canyon is subject to debris flows or if debris flows from the steep walls and tributary creeks deposit in the main channel. Based on our observations it seems that the latter option is the case, although debris flows from Sally Creek might reach the apex of the fan, below the canyon, on rare occasions.