z_Obsolete_Invited Speakers 2020

Abstract

Rivers of Carbon: River Management Strategies for Enhancing Carbon Sequestration
Ellen Wohl
University Distinguished Professor
Colorado State University, Department of Geosciences

Models of global carbon dynamics commonly treat rivers as neutral pipes — passive conduits for dissolved and particulate organic carbon moving from terrestrial environments to the ocean. However, ecologists and biogeochemists have convincingly demonstrated that rivers are active pipes that release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in a manner dependent on the specific characteristics of the river. Similarly, geomorphologists have demonstrated that river corridors can store substantial stocks of organic carbon in floodplain soils and downed wood over 102-103 years. This presentation reviews carbon budgets in rivers, the characteristics of rivers that facilitate organic carbon storage and values of carbon storage for different types of rivers and geographic regions, as well as the human alterations that reduce riverine carbon storage. The presentation also discusses how river management can explicitly focus on increasing carbon sequestration within river corridors.

Biography

Ellen Wohl received a BS in geology from Arizona State University and a PhD in geosciences from the University of Arizona before joining the faculty at Colorado State University in 1989. Her research focuses on physical process and form in river corridors, including interactions with biotic and human communities. She has focused particularly on rivers in bedrock canyons and in mountainous regions, and she has conducted field research on every continent but Antarctica. She has written nearly 200 scientific papers and book chapters, as well as 16 books, and is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America. Much of her current research examines how physical complexity associated with the presence of instream wood and beaver dams influences the form and function of river ecosystems.

Abstract

Carnation Creek watershed experiment – long-term effects of historic forestry practices on stream channels, aquatic habitats, and coho salmon smolt production
Peter J. Tschaplinski
Unit Head – Ecosystems Science
Ecosystems Branch, BC Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy

The Carnation Creek Watershed Project is a long-term study of the effects of forestry practices on a small coastal watershed (11 km2) located in southwestern Vancouver Island. Initiated in 1970, this pre-treatment vs. post-treatment case study consists of five years of pre-harvest, six years of during-harvest, and now, 36 years of post-harvest research. Forty-one percent of the watershed was clearcut from 1976-1981. One tributary sub-basin (1.1 km2) was left as an unharvested reference drainage. Riparian treatments varied from clearcuts to a variable-width buffer.
Fish population responses to logging have been complex, and specific to species and life stages. Stream warming due partly to riparian harvest increased the growth and survival of juvenile coho salmon and elevated smolt production by 65% for nearly three decades. These relatively short-term thermal benefits offset the effects of riparian clearcutting which included accelerated bank erosion, streambed scour, loss of stable in-stream wood, and sediment movement downstream. Landslides in 1984 greatly amplified these effects but stream channel physical changes associated with mass wasting―logjams and amplified streambed scour and fill processes―took more than 20 years to propagate downstream to reduce fish habitat complexity and increase streambed instability and sediment transport over the entire portion inhabited by anadromous salmon. These delayed impacts have surpassed the thermal-related benefits for coho salmon. Fry-to-smolt overwinter survival has declined from a mean of 50% between 1982 and 2004 to 15% since 2005. Coho salmon smolt production has consequently been reduced to below pre-logging levels.
More than 35 years after the main phase of logging was concluded, the streambed in the anadromous portion of Carnation Creek remains heavily aggraded and 2-3 times wider than in pre-logging years. Pools are less abundant and shallower. Aggraded channel beds have reduced the amount of wetted habitat during summer, lowering the water volumes available for fish, and potentially reducing benthic macroinvertebrate food production and drift from riffles. Low-velocity shelter habitats in the form of undercut banks with stable in-stream wood which support coho salmon overwinter survival have become rare. Conditions at Carnation Creek will be common in many coastal BC watersheds harvested decades ago. Residual forestry-related alterations will be widespread. Results show that these alterations may take decades to fully develop and persist for decades longer without watershed and stream channel restoration.

Biography

Peter Tschaplinski is a Research Scientist with the BC Ministry of Environment, specializing in the fields of Fish Biology, Aquatic Ecology, and Fish-Forestry Interactions. Peter received his B.Sc. in Biology and M.Sc. in Vertebrate Ecology from Carleton University in Ottawa. He received his PhD in Marine Biology from the University of Victoria where he studied the ecology of the estuarine life history variant of juvenile coho salmon. He leads the multi-disciplinary Ecosystems Science Unit in the Conservation Science Section of the Ecosystems Branch. Peter has conducted research on the ecology of Pacific salmon and on the effects of forest management on aquatic ecosystems and fish for more than 35 years. He has participated in several multi-agency and multi-disciplinary watershed-level research programs in both the coastal and interior regions of British Columbia. His current research interests include projecting the effects of climate change on landscape disturbance regimes, aquatic communities, and fish.

Abstract

Bankfull Discharge and Bankfull Channel Characteristics of Alluvial Rivers: Can We Get Beyond the 1.5 Year Flood?
Gary Parker
Professor
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

It has long been known that alluvial rivers are the authors of their own geometry. In principle, water in the form of rainfall, a supply of sediment and vegetation should be sufficient ingredients for a channel to form on an initially featureless floodplain, and to acquire the standard features of hydraulic geometry. Available today are a wide range of empirical and theoretical techniques to estimate bankfull width, bankfull depth and slope as functions of bankfull discharge and parameters related to sediment. Yet bankfull discharge itself should not be a dependent variable. Rivers ought to choose their own bankfull discharge in the process of making their channels.
Bankfull discharge has been empirically related to a flood recurrence interval such as the 1.5 year flood. While such specifications are useful, they shed no light on the processes giving rise to bankfull characteristics. Here we investigate the morphodynamics of the problem in terms of floodplain building and floodplain lowering processes, as well as channel aggradation and degradation.
The morphology we consider is a single-channel meandering river. The river is subjected to a flow duration curve, characterizing the probability of exceedance of any given discharge. Relatively low flood flows encourage the removal of sediment from the floodplain as the channel migrates, rendering the channel shallower. Relatively high flood flows, on the other hand, deepen the channel through overbank deposition. Integrating over the flow duration curve allows determination of bankfull discharge itself, along with bankfull channel characteristics. Applications are presented for the Trinity River, Texas and the Minnesota River, Minnesota.

Biography

Gary Parker is a professor in the Environmental Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  He holds a 75 percent appointment in the Depart­ment of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a 25 per­cent appointment in the Department of Geology, where he is the W.H. Johnson Professor of Geology.

Professor Parker received a B.S. from the Department of Mechanics and Materials Science of Johns Hopkins University (1971) and a Ph.D. from the Department of Civil Engineering of the Uni­versity of Minnesota (1974).  Before coming to the University of Illinois, he was an Institute of Technology Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Minne­sota.  Prof. Parker was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysi­cal Union in 2003 and received the G.K. Warren Award in Fluviatile Geomorphology in 2002.  He has received the Schoemaker Award twice and the Ippen Award from the International Association of Hydraulic Research, and the Einstein Award, Hilgard Prize and Stevens Award from the American Society of Civil Engi­neers.  In 1991 he also received the University of Minnesota In­stitute of Technology Outstand­ing Teacher Award.

Professor Parker teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in flu­id mechanics, river engineering, and sediment transport.  One of Dr. Parker’s research goals is to use the fundamental techniques of fluid mechanics and applied mathematics to treat interesting geomorphological problems.  Related special research includes mechanics of river meandering; sorting of mixed grain sediment by fluvial processes; bank erosion and protection using permeable dikes and vegetation; and reservoir sedimentation.  Development of a mechanistic understanding of the processes involved with sediment transport in rivers, and the morphologies they create, is of prime importance.  River meander migration research has led to the development of computer models that predict channel shift and can therefore be used in the design of floodplain structures such as bridges, intakes, etc.

Abstract

First Foods Management with a River Vision
Eric Quaempts
Natural Resources Director
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation

Historically, western management approaches have often struggled to make clear, direct links between natural resource management goals and people. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation’s (CTUIR) Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has organized its functions and responsibilities through a focus on traditionally gathered foods identified by the CTUIR community as “First Foods,” including water, fish, big game, roots, and berries.  The First Foods serving ritual in the community’s ceremonies and cultural events identifies a reciprocal relationship between people and the Foods on which they depend.  The physical and temporal organization of First Foods manifested in the serving order is also observed in the active physical and ecological processes occurring on the landscape and is utilized to guide applied management.  We utilize First Foods to bring attention to ecological processes and prioritize efforts to re-naturalize those processes that produce and sustain First Foods. While the First Foods management approach provides a direct and culturally appropriate means to monitor and report restoration success to the Tribal community, it also offers a model approach for non-Tribal resources managers responsible for water, water quality, fish, wildlife, and their habitats.  Management examples are provided in the form of a River Vision approach to floodplain restoration, which the CTUIR applies in five subbasins and 43,900 km² in NE Oregon and SE Washington, USA. A brief preview of an Uplands Vision is also provided.

Biography

Eric Quaempts has served as the Director for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation’s (CTUIR) Department of Natural Resources (DNR) since 2004, and developed and implemented the First Foods management approach in 2006-07.   An enrolled member of the CTUIR, Eric has spent most of his life living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and his professional career has been focused in working on the reservation and in the Ceded Lands of the CTUIR.

He has presented the CTUIR’s First Foods management approach in a variety of forums, including state and national professional meetings, local, state, and federal governments, inter-tribal forums, and at the Universidad de Concepcion in Chile and to aboriginal communities and land managers in Australia.

He served as the Oregon Tribal representative to the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board from 2009 – 16, including five as co-chair, and currently serves on the Oregon Water Resources Commission.

Eric earned his Bachelor’s of Science in Wildlife Science from Oregon State University.

His personal interests include family, fly-fishing, photography, traveling, cooking, and dining, fine or otherwise. His daughter, Sascha, is eight.