This past summer (2016), students at The College of Idaho — Donavan Maude (16′ Biology and Environmental Studies double major) and Natasha Dacic (18′ Math-Physics and Environmental Studies double major) — traveled into the Idaho backcountry to study riverine response to wildfire. Read about their experience on The College of Idaho, News Blog. Off the grid: Yotes research in Idaho backcountry
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John Buffington and I just returned from an 11 day trip to re-survey a one-mile section of the Middle Fork of the Boise River that experienced three simultaneous debris flow inputs following the Hot Creek Fire in 2003. The photo series below (credit: John Buffington) shows the rapid response of the main stem river at the Steel Creek fan. Our surveys continued on a former postdoc project and sediment transport model developed by Mik Lewiki. I won’t go into too many of those specifics here, but stay tuned for the 2012 repeat photo next week.
One of the components of the Climate Change and Mountain Basins project that is my central postdoc research, is an investigation of how climate change might alter the flow regime and different habitat factors for different species in different regions. To this end, we are working with the Northern Rivers Institute at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland to expand our analysis. I spent a month this past summer in the North Esk basin surveying basic reach-scale stream morphology characteristics in order to develop basin-scale predictions of salmonid habitat parameters (grain size for spawning). The rain-dominated system and strong influence of glacial lag material in the streams yield a different channel forms than I have been used to seeing in the snow-melt basins of the western US.
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