Our group went out on the New River yesterday to capture a longitudinal profile of water quality above and below the Claytor Lake dam. Early in the morning, water was not moving through the turbines and DO was over 100%…but as soon as the turbines were turned on DO plummeted to < 50%. Bottom water from the reservoir will do that! The picture below is of Maddie, Tyler and Mohammad navigating downstream.
This fall I’m teaching Introduction to Green Engineering and Field Methods in Hydrology – both are fun classes, with 84 in GE and 20 undergrad/grads in field methods. The first week of classes is always busy, and on top of that Erich Hester and I both signed up for the Ecostream conference in Asheville! Although it made for a busy week, the conference was well worth the effort = both our talks were well received. I presented Breanne’s greenhouse gas study in the context of stream restoration, and Erich presented findings from the modeling/field studies related to stream restoration approaches on reducing nitrogen export. There are lots of opportunities for folks interested in stream restoration / improving water quality within river networks. One of the most interesting talks was on the role beavers as ecoengineers….in the eastern US = it generated lots of discussion.
Yesterday we ventured 20 miles upstream of the Claytor Lake dam on the boat, measuring a suite of water quality variables. We then put in below the dam and floated another 2 miles. The water moving through the turbines and into the New River must have been bottom water, judging by the low DO (less than 50% saturation).
This week we participated in a 24-hour sampling on a local reservoir with the Carey group. We performed boat Synoptics every 3 hours, and measured ch4/co2 from the reservoir every hour using the Picarro. Lots of fun (not much sleep), and some great meals!
