| Incline Experimental Watershed Volunteers. Sampling in the experimental watershed started as a federally funded project, and is now continued as a volunteer effort by area scientists interested in keeping the data current. A dozen volunteers turned out on April 14 for the annual spring snow sampling trek. Here Christine Kirick |
| (standing), a former graduate research assistant at DRI and now a Reno area consultant, and Chris Ennes, Nevada Department of Transportation hydrologist, take a snow core with a device called a federal sampler. The density of the snow in a number of cores obtained from around the watershed is used to calculate the water content of the snowpack. (photo by Dr. Rick Susfalk) |
The Incline Creek Experimental
Watershed
Nevada researchers
have lots to learn from
one little stream
Ask DRI’s Dr. Rick Susfalk
what he and others at DRI, the University of Nevada, Reno, and the University
of Nevada, Las Vegas want to know about the Incline Creek watershed and he’ll
tell you, “a little bit of everything.” Susfalk is part of the Incline
Creek Experimental Watershed (ICEW) project, a joint effort with the goal of
collecting a broad set of background data on this particular area within the
Lake Tahoe Basin. It’s the group’s hope that other researchers can
then use the data to identify areas for subsequent, more in-depth, studies.
Susfalk, along with DRI’s Dr.
Gayle Dana, recently organized one component of the study, a snow survey to
help investigate how watershed properties might affect the snowpack, and to
collect data for Dana’s computer model predicting snowmelt runoff and
chemistry. “We try to take the survey at the point of maximum snowpack
depth, but this year, with early rains and late snowstorms, our early April
date was probably off.”
Other components of the ICEW include
looking at the effect of vegetation types on the soil solution; monitoring mercury
concentrations in water, plants and soils; assessing changes in water chemistry
at varying stream levels and locations; and studying macroinvertebrates (those
are bugs, Susfalk says) as indicators of stream health.
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| Incline Experimental Watershed in the Lake
Tahoe Basin (Graphic by Dr. Rick Susfalk) |
Why concentrate all this attention on this particular watershed? Location, location, location, according to Susfalk. “The Incline Creek Watershed sits on the gray granite soils so typical of the Tahoe Basin,” Susfalk says. “The only other well-studied watershed in the Basin is on andesite-derived soil, which isn’t nearly as common, and soil-type can have a large impact on water quality.” The area also contains both urbanized areas—Incline Village, Nevada—and undeveloped forests, providing researchers with the opportunity to contrast the areas. Finally, there is easy access from the highway, and a rich history of stream data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection.
And finally, learning more about the Incline Creek Watershed can make a difference to Lake Tahoe itself. “There’s something interesting that’s happening here in terms of nutrients and sediments being delivered to the lake,” Susfalk says. “The more we know, the more we can help.”Additional information is available at http://inclinecreek.dri.edu
– Jackie Allen
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