One.
This is Paul Hertz and Jen Sweeney of Arizona State University
interviewing Paul Grahams at the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research
Center in Flagstaff Arizona on January 24th, 2020. Thank you for joining
us today. Paul, happy to be here. Um Start out by telling us your name and
spell it for us, please. And who you work for and the years that you've
been involved in Grand Canyon research. Uh Yeah. Well, my name is Paul
Grams. Uh Paulgr
A MS. Um I've been uh working at uh the US GS here at GCMRC. I started 12
years and I started in January 2008. Um just a couple of months before the
2008 high flow experiment which I'm sure we'll talk about. Um But my
involvement actually dates back to January of 1991 when I uh went on a
wintertime river trip as an undergraduate student
with uh which professors and to do what kind of research that was uh again
, that was a wintertime trip. I was an undergraduate at Middlebury College
in Vermont. I had already taken one geomorphology class from Jack Schmidt
and he offered, this was the second time he did it, he was a professor at
Middlebury at the time and he offered uh a winter term. Middlebury was on
a, on a kind of winter term schedule where they had a January term that
students could just do one class. And so he offered a January term class
that was essentially a Colorado river trip. Uh studying, you know, the uh
the the issues on river management and connected with studying the issues
on river management in Grand Canyon. And so I took that as a I because I
was a, a junior or a senior. I can't quite remember how did your career as
a researcher evolve from that original trip? I assume you fell in love
with the Grand Canyon. Well, it was a great trip. There was about uh
probably about 12 students. Uh Jack, uh a river guide named Tom Moody who
was very instrumental in uh the early part of the program. Um and a couple
other uh friends of Jack's on the trip and we did a tw I think it was a
2122 day trip, which is a very long trip with a motor rig, which means,
you know, lots of, lots of time uh camping, lots of time to do hikes. It
was a, it was a great experience and we got to see a lot of sites on that
trip. Um And then after that trip, I went on and did uh undergraduate
thesis, working with Jack as my advisor, studying uh sediment related
issues on the Snake River in Hells Canyon. So um so that was really the
start of the that trip kind of set me on the course towards studying
rivers and uh studying especially studying rivers downstream from dams.
And was the beginning of what is that uh you know, getting
uh 30 year, getting close to a 30 year working relationship with, with
Jack on studying rivers. And so, working with him still today on both the
Colorado River and throughout the basin. So you have both a master's and a
phd. You specialized in river geomorphology. Um You want to talk a little
bit about the uh research that you continue to do as you went after those
advanced degrees. Um Yeah, I did an undergraduate degree in geology. And
again, that was I did a, a master's thesis on uh looking at sand bars. You
know, we, that river trip we did in Grand Canyon, we surveyed a few
sandbars that Jack had studied. You know, Jack did his, his dissertation
research in Grand Canyon in the 19 eighties. And so this wasn't too long
after that. And so we went back to his study sites, surveyed a few
sandbars. But um he was at that time, you know, thinking more broadly than
Grand Canyon. And we got some uh people interested in studying uh sand
bars on the snake river in Hells Canyon. So I did a little part of that as
a undergraduate thesis um looked at in the Hells Canyon is a, is a place
where um you know, in Grand Canyon, we have the sediment rich tributaries
below the dam that we can talk about more. But that supply a lot of
sediment that make uh make it possible to sustain the, the sandbars in
Grand Canyon. Whereas in on the Snake River, there's very little
tributaries downstream. So it was a case where there was extreme sandbar
erosion caused by the upstream dam. And so we documented that and um today
, uh it was kind of a very low profile study at the time. But uh there are
still people up there managing uh Hells Canyon Dam who, who refer back to
that work in our dealing with, you know, the effects of Hells Canny Dam on
the sandbars downstream. Um But then after that, I uh uh took a year or
two off and then uh was living in Utah and Jack by that time, had moved
from Vermont to Utah State University and he, and kind of his interest in
looking at other river systems or other parts of the Colorado River basin
, um had gotten a project with the National Park Service to look at how
Flaming Gorge Dam had affected the, the Green River in Dinosaur National
Monument. And so he offered that to me as a master's thesis project. So I
spent, uh you know, a mass three years or so working on that project. And
uh and that was uh essentially evolved, involved looking at how the dam
operations, you know, the building of Flaming Gorge Dam had changed the
downstream river system first in dinosaur. And then we expanded it a
little bit to include the whole river from Flaming Gorge Dam down through
to the the Vernal Utah area and country. So I finished that up and wasn't
quite sure what I was going to do next, but continued working on rivers
with Jack and at Utah State for a couple of years as sort of a research
associate then decided I wanted to go ahead and do a uh pursue a phd. And
uh I got in touch with uh a professor at Johns Hopkins named Peter Wilcock
, who was somebody I'd met a few times and uh it was a colleague of Jack's
and um decided to go work with him to do something just a little bit
different and did something that was more of a um uh less of a field based
study and more of a, a modeling and laboratory based study. So I did uh
experiments in the laboratory flume and uh modeling work and, but that was
related to Grand Canyon. It was with uh it was um uh partially funded by
the Glen Kanny Dam Adaptive Management Program and it was looking at
controls on sand entrainment and sand transport and of course bedded river
systems. But with laboratory experiments, can you explain the word
entrainment? Oh The, the the the picking up of sand from the bed of the
river by the, by the water. So the process by which water is picking up
the sand and carrying it in suspension. And so, so you did your phd um uh
doing research again on sediment transport, essentially, essentially
sediment transport. Yeah, in Grand Canyon. And when you finish that phd is
that when you got hired here at Grand Canyon Monitoring and research, not
immediately, although I just did a couple year postdoc position um at Utah
State University. So the phd was at Johns Hopkins uh and then moved back
to Utah where I lived for a long time, did a couple of years there of post
working on, on looking at streams, uh mountain streams in the forest for
the forest service related project. But then this, then this job came up
and uh took that and this job is what, tell us a little bit more about
what you do here. Um
I was hired now, this is a bit of the program and evolution of, of GCMRC
is um I was hired as a program manager which was the Physical Science
program manager position in 2008. Um And at that time, the structure of
GCRC was a little bit different than it is. Now, at that time, we were
structured a little bit more as a uh uh with managers of a few different
programs. Um And I don't, when uh there's been some evolution in terms of
how GCRC has functioned since it was started. There was I think some
uncertainty or even an idea that GCMRC might be a very small organization
and most of the work would be contracted out or done through co-operative
agreements with universities. And GC Mercy would be a small number of
managers that manage those contracts. And I was hired at a point where it
maybe in between that, where there was quite a bit of work done in house
because, you know, there's things that are ongoing. So the idea of always
contracting out, I think kind of immediately became problematic. But at
any rate, I was hired as one of those program managers and did that job
for a couple of years and in that capacity, I I um managed the uh uh
sediment monitoring program that's continuing now. Um and uh sandbar
monitoring program. Um but more as a manager and then after a couple of
years, and this is Jack Schmidt comes into the story again here. He was
hired as chief and
2012 11.
I don't remember the year, but he, he was um hired as the chief and he
felt that we should have more of a research focus in house. And he made it
possible for me to transition my position from uh quote unquote program
manager into a research scientist. So my title now is a research
hydrologist. And so instead of sort of broadly overseeing programs, I
manage a couple of research projects. So it's a uh somewhat of a semantic
difference but it, it, it, it, it is a real difference in terms of how the
work gets done here. Um because instead of just managing projects, so
David Topping, who comes over to my colleague, Coequal, he manages the
suspended sediment transport monitoring and measuring program. And I was
nominally overseeing that as a program manager. Well, now he's just
managing his project and then I have the sandbar project that I just
manage and, and work on as a researcher, not just as a manager. So you
work for the US Geological Survey here at GCMRC. Um But much of the work
that you're doing goes to inform decision making for the Glen Canon Dam
Adaptive Management Program. Can you talk a little bit about how you see
your role as a researcher at GCMRC in the larger environment of the
Adaptive Management Program? What's your role in the Adaptive Management
Program? Well, I, I mean, I, you know, I mean, I think simply our role as
I think every as people generally call it is to be the science provider,
the information provider. So I do see it as
giving them the information they seek to make management decisions um and
trying to and uh and also I think a big part of the role is because they
do this as, you know, nonspecialists, certainly, at least or no. Most of
them, non science, I mean, a lot of them have science backgrounds but some
of them don't. And if there's, if they do have a science background, it
could be in any area. So, a big part of our role is educators on the
science we do and on how the system works and connecting that with
whatever resource or um whether it's a biological resource, a species of
fish or whether it's the, the sediment or the sandbars themselves, how
those are related to the work we do or how, how um how they are, how they
are changing or how they are being affected by the, the dam operations or
other factors that might cause changes in those resources. So does, does
your research is your research agenda, your personal one and GCMR CS
larger constellation of research um Is it partly directed by questions and
problems that the adaptive management program participants oppose to? You
? Do? Can they come to you and say we need to know more about X? So we can
make a decision about why is that? Yeah, and it, it happens on, you know,
with the program that's gone on for so long. I mean, they have some
general goals um that, you know, sometimes it'd be nice if the, the goals
could be more specific, but that's difficult in the political and in the
in the context. But uh you know, so for, for sediment, they have a goal
that's something like to, to uh maintain or increase uh sediment um uh
throughout the Colorado River and Grand Canyon for recreational um
cultural and biological or ecological purposes. So, that's recovering
sediment that has been lost since Saddam was put in. Right. That would be
, uh I think that would be up to interpretation and reading that. I mean,
the, the goal is really, they, they've, they've written, they spent quite
a bit of time and it's, it's uh to maintain or increase. So when it comes
to saying, do we want to bring back to a restoring to a pre dam condition
? That's something that they would, that different stakeholders might have
different opinions about. Um when it, what we try to do in those
situations is tell them, OK, here's what it used to look like. Here, here
, here's what we have relative to a pre condition. It's up to them to
decide whether that's the goal or not. They have not, they have not
declared that, I mean, having a pre damn condition as a goal would be
pretty difficult to achieve and they haven't, they haven't set that goal
specifically. So some of your work, um you know, I'm at a university and
there's uh academic freedom in the sense where I could choose to research
anything I wanted to research. As long as I could find, some financial
support are you sort of in between that where you can choose some of your
own research projects and generate the science that you think is valuable.
But also you're responsible for helping develop a knowledge space to
support decision making in the Adaptive management program. Are you
juggling those two? Together? We do juggle those. I mean, we are free to
do research on any just like an academic. If we can bring in funding for
other research, we are free to work on that. And so we do have some of us
don't, some of us at, at, at GCRC work only in Grand Canyon and some have
some other, a few other outside projects. I have a couple other non Grand
Canyon projects that funding comes in for and I work on separately from
Grand Canyon. So we are free to do that as, as uh as scientists um within
Grand Canyon. If we're using, you know, our, our uh adaptive management
program funding, we try to keep it to things that are tied to the program
and are directly relevant. We have a work plan process where we do that.
So within that, if um to I guess maintain some level of uh there are
certain things that, you know, we monitor uh sand bars in the same way
every, every year. And we've done it for 30 years that doesn't create a
high impact journal article publication each year because it's kind of an
ongoing data series of the same thing. So when it comes to um maybe adding
a little bit of innovative science to that, we try to bring in new
technology at times. So evaluate different methods to, to monitor what is
of interest to the stakeholders. But doing it in, in new ways, we've
evaluated use of, you know, um the the sandbar surveys that we do um were
started by uh uh the group at Northern Arizona University and uh the early
19 nineties and uh using methods at the time and those have evolved a
little bit um traditional survey methods. So we've evolved, we've explored
uh bringing in more modern or new technology and things like that. So
that's some of the ways we uh are doing the, the work for the Adaptive
Management Program, but also keeping it current and, and scientifically
relevant. Mhm. Great. So, um one last question about the relationship
between GCMRC and the Adaptive Management Program. And then I wanna drill
down into the science of segmentation a little bit more. What, what is
your sense of, of what the relationship is? And I know it's changed over
time. You've only been here since 2008. But how do you see that
relationship besides you're a science provider? Is there anything more you
can say about that? Oh, I think it, I mean, it's, it's
um hm we
beyond being the science provider. Um
I think it's a source of stability for the program. Um there are, I mean,
there are stakeholders that have been around for a long time. Um And there
are new stakeholders. Um And so it kind of brings back to that kind of
comes back to that education side of it. I mean, that's one thing I try to
keep in mind now, I think when I started 12 years ago, a majority of the
stakeholders were people who had been involved in the program since the
beginning. And uh so maybe the education aspect wasn't quite the same then
, but we're in a stage now where a lot of the original stakeholders,
there's a lot of turnover of people retiring new people coming in. So I
think uh providing that kind of continuity and education to make it
possible for new stakeholders or ones that are less familiar and have
probably have less time to actually come up to speed, you know, don't we
now have a, I mean, if you added up the publications and the, the amount
of literature and what's been written and not written or is in gray
literature on the Colorado River and Grand Canyon, there's nobody that
could get through that. And in 10 years, let alone, you know, if they're
just starting out as a new stakeholder, it's kind of overwhelming. So I
think distilling what's, you know, important uh within each area that we
work in for them is, is I think one important thing we provide are there
specific documents in which you do that distillation.
Uh You know, that's a good question. I uh I mean, we do our, our work plan
is on a three year cycle. So each time we write a work plan that has um
some of that in it, II I don't know if I can say that's uh uh if it, if we
write those intentionally with as a, as a kind of a broad overview, but
those are provided in that in our reports. But no, I, I think it happens
when we interact with them mostly at meetings and give our presentations
on our, our project updates that we try. I try to do that kind of a thing
. I, I bring that up because a little bit later, I'm gonna ask you a
question about key reports or documents that um should be preserved for
the historical record that provide sort of summaries of important
developments or important research. And so, um keep that in the back of
your mind and we'll come back to it a little bit later. Um So what have we
learned about sediment and the Grand Canyon and the role of the dam in
shaping, you know, that sediment transport and sediment load and sediment
deposition since 1991 when you were first down there? Oh boy, since 1991.
Um There's been a lot since 1991 at that period. It was uh just when um
there was the push to really constrain dama operations from extreme
fluctuations on a daily basis. So from in the 19 sixties, up until 1990 91
the dam was operated primarily for hydropower generation. So daily
fluctuations from lows of around 5000 cubic feet per second to highs of
around 30,000 cubic feet per second on a daily basis. That was, that's
probably the extreme range, but I think it typically fluctuated from
around five or six up to 25,000 CFS, which is very high. The pre dam
average flood was around um 85 or 90,000 cubic feet per second. So that's
fluctuating from essentially not turning the river off, but turning it way
down low to a third of an annual flood each day. And so that was a source
of um uh uh a mechanism
of, of sand erosion. I mean, the sand bar deposits are inherently unstable
, but the dam did two things. It uh it, it, it blocked all upstream
sediment from the whole Colorado river basin from entering Grand Canyon
and then it changed the flow regime. And so those two things resulted in
erosion with the clear water, high fluctuating flows, but then the lack of
replenishment because the upper basin um sediment uh delivery was gone. So
those two things contribute to a big decline in sandbars. And in the
nineties, that was the point at which they had seen that they had seen the
potential um by the, there was a uh unintentional floods that occurred in
1983 and 84. And they saw, wow, even in this, in a system that's been so
impacted, the sandbars could recover because those floods did build sand
bars on the banks of the river. And they saw that and then they saw that
they were eroding again. And so I think that sparked the idea with the,
the sediment, senior sediment scientists at the time. Uh you know, Jack
Schmidt, uh Ned A Andrews. Um uh Bob Webb. Uh I'm sure others, Tim Randall
at the Bureau of Reclamation, I think was involved. Um I was a, I was an
undergraduate student, so I was sitting at the outside ring of the
campfire when they were having those discussions on that river trip in, in
uh 1991 about, well, what would happen if we did uh um an intentional
flood release from the dam? Would that do the same thing as those floods
in the 19 eighties? And so that was, I think that was a big turning point
was just the, the, the um the idea and the follow through that happened at
that time to, to give it a try with that first experimental flood that
they did in 1996. So I think that idea came about and I'm sure if you've
uh you need to check with uh some of those guys on when exactly they came
up with the idea. But it was around that time. And then um it took a few
years for it to gain traction and to get the, the, the the political will
to do it behind it. But, but by the time that happened in 1996 that was a
big turning point then and, and uh the that provided the demonstration
that yes, you could use the dam to raise the river to build sandboards
because the real problem with the the situation of the sandboards are
those two things, the lack of a flood to build them and then you need the
supply to do it. So there's just, it's pretty simple process. We just need
two things. You need the water to move the sand around, but then you need
the sand there to begin with. And those are the two things we study is
what is, is, is um what the floods do, what the flows do to building the
bars. But then is there enough supply of the sand such that those floods
can actually do it because if there isn't enough supply, then the floods
will eventually cause net erosion. There's enough background storage that
you could do a few of these floods and expect them to build sand bars.
It's kind of like a deficit spending situation. Are you, are you, are you
, are you using that last bit in your bank account to build some sand bars
and then gonna run out or are you are, you, do you have a auto auto
deposit system going that's putting sand back in. So now you mentioned um
when Glen Canyon Dam went in, it, cut off the flow of sediment from all of
the upstream tributaries, there's still a few downstream tributaries below
Glen Canyon Dam. Not too many. Would you explain what and where they are?
And a little bit about how you monitor those to determine when a high flow
experiment is appropriate, you know, and those are critical and that, and
that is what makes it possible to do this in Grand Canyon to manage the
system for both the hydropower interests and for sand bars and for
recreational interests is that we have tributaries that do supply a lot of
sediment. And the first of those is the Pura River. It drains a big, big
portion of southern Utah. It comes into the Colorado River just at Lee's
ferry about 15 miles downstream from Glen Canyon Dam. So really relatively
soon down near downstream from the dam is a tributary that supplies a lot
of sediment. Um Not a lot in context, what the pre dam average loads were.
Something on the order of maybe five ish percent of what would have gone
by Lee's ferry. Um Without the dam is what the priya delivers on average.
But the, but because it's just one tributary you're dealing with, you
know, the, and, and, and, and the sediment delivery events are triggered
by very unpredictable uh summer monsoon type thunderstorm events. So when
that sediment comes in, it's predictable in the sense that it happens in
the late summer, early fall, sometime July through September each year.
But you have years when nothing happens and which occurred last year. And
then you have years that you get a lot of uh monsoonal activity and a lot
of thunderstorms and a lot of sediment delivery. Um But that's the source
of sediment, the source of resupply the, the the replenishment of the bank
account, the sediment bank account that allows us to um use flood releases
from the dam to rebuild sandbars. And uh the way we do it is by measuring
the stream flow and sediment concentrations on the Priya River. So it's a
river that almost dries up. It's usually got a little bit of a trickle of
water in it. But when a flood happens and we know when a floods happening
by simply by watching the weather or we have upstream gauges that tell us
when floods coming downstream. But when we know a flood is coming
downstream, um a team of hydrologists from this office, get their trucks
and drive out to Lee's ferry and start sampling and they measure the flow
and the sediment concentrations. And then we start analyzing those data
and calculating how much sediment is coming in from the Priya River. And
we do that every year. And um and then this process is written up into a
protocol that is a document produced by the beer of reclamation for how
the controlled floods will be designed. And so we monitor those sediment
inputs. And once we've gotten a few, we um the data get published. I
actually go to our website. Um but they also go to the Bureau of
Reclamation and then they use those data in a model that, that predicts
given that amount of sediment what will happen to that sediment with or
without a high flow. Um The idea here is that it is all I think the
banking, the bank account analogy is the correct one because what we're
trying to do is keep the sediment bank account in um Marble Canyon, which
is the the reach of the river between Lee ferry and 60 miles downstream
where the next major tributary comes in. And I can talk about that more in
a minute, but we're focused mainly on the Priya River. We try to uh keep
the sediment bank account and that reach on an annual basis to be balanced.
So that what goes in is about the same as what goes out and what goes in
is the sediment from the Priya River. And what goes out is what the
Colorado river transport out downstream, 60 miles downstream from where
the Pria River comes in. And we measure that as well. We have a
measurement program that measures that. But we also have models that can
predict how much will go out at the downstream end. And so once we have uh
some data on how much sediment has come in from the Priya River, so maybe
the Priya River has some storms in August. And we get some data on that.
By the end of August and early September, we give that data to the Bureau
of Reclamation and they run this model and say, ok, we've had um 500,000
tons of sand come in from the Priya River. If we do normal dam operations.
No, hi, no flood. Um about 100,000 tons of that sand will go out. That
means there's 400,000 tons left in the bank account to work with. So then
they rerun the model putting in a flood and they put in a flood. And the
protocol that they've written allows for a flood to be up to.
Is it 60 or 96 hours? I can't remember one of those two, a certain
duration at the capacity of the power plant plus the bypass tub. So that
gets us to about 44 to 45,000 cubic feet per second um flow rate that they
could release from the dam for a flood. So they run a model with that
flood, 45,000 CFS for 60 hours and then see what happens to the bank
account of sediment. And if that causes all the sediment to go out and
drive it negative they decide that floods too big and they rerun the model
with the smaller flood. But if that model predicts, gee, you can run that
big flood and the balance is at zero or above. They say, well, that's it.
We can do it and then that's what they schedule for the fall. So there's a
high flow experimental flood each fall if, depending on whether the
sediment is there for it. Exactly. Just following that, that step by step
process, if there's enough sediment from the Pria, that you can run a
flood, but keep your Marble Canyon sand bank account balance above zero,
you can do it. If it drives it negative, you reduce the size of that flood
to a minimum of I think 24 hours and at power plant capacity. So they run
this model iteratively with progressively smaller floods to find the one
that fits. And if nothing fits, then they don't do one at all. And that's
what happened last year that the sediment inputs were so low that I don't
even know if they bothered. They probably ran the model and, but the, the
, the, the balance was already negative without even having a flood. So,
and that's what happens if you don't have any Prius sediment inputs. So do
you think uh before you turn to the little Colorado River? Because I know
that's your next example. Um Do you think that um those models are working
or are they constantly having to be updated because what you expect to
happen based on the modeling doesn't happen. I mean, how close to
predicting, you know, the outcome that you want are the models. The models
that this is the, this main model is a model written by uh uh Scott Wright
who worked, he's still a US GS employee, but he worked at, at GCMRC up
until just before I left. Um, now he's with the California Water Science
Center and by, by Scott and Dave Topping, who's still here. And um it's a
, it's a model for predicting sand transport in the river based on uh the
sediment supply conditions and flow rate and it works pretty well. And so
when we test the model performance by, we do in this scenario, the
predictive mode. But then we can, after we've actually done the flood and
everything we can compare the measurements, the field data and do a do an
after the fact assessment of how the model performed predicted relative to
what actually happened. And
when we've done those comparisons, the model predictions tend to be off by
a little bit, but on the order of 1015 20% or something, which with the
objectives of this, you know, the model isn't designed and doesn't predict
what happens to each individual sandbar. It's not designed to do that and
it doesn't do that. But what it does do is predict this predict what's
going to happen to the sediment bank account and it does that closely
enough that we can use it as this management tool. So, um I mean, and I
think it's a good example of where the science really has produced
something for man, for the managers at a useful scale. I mean, people at
the same time have spent effort, have not spent quite a bit of effort
trying to do much more precise and finally resolved models that maybe
would predict what every sandbar does. But those never got finished
because they're very complicated, very finicky and difficult to difficult
um and require a lot of, lot of input data and constant evaluation.
Whereas this model is pretty robust, quite simple. And it does what the,
what the managers really need, which is a tool to tell them, you know,
whether or not to do a flood and about how big it should be. And if it's
off by a few percent, it doesn't matter that much. And it, and it looks
like it's been off in the realm where they tend to be a little more
conservative, which is good that the models predicted maybe a little more
erosion that has ended than what has ended up happening. So our, our, our
sediment balance ends up being a little bit positive, which is better. So
it's erring on the side of, of holding back a little bit. So the second uh
tributary that uh contributes sediment is the little Colorado River. Um
and that is about uh 60 miles downstream from Lee's ferry it uh at the
time. And that's been, that's something we're learning a lot about right
now. And um uh a couple of my colleagues here have recently completed a
study of the little color red river basin to better understand what's
going on in that river basin. But um it was considered to be about equal
in the amount of sediment delivery to the Priya River. Um It's looking
like recently, the amount of sediment contributed by the little Colorado
River has declined um is less and uh and it's also less predictable. It's
a little bit um the monsoon storms, although they happen in the little
Colorado River basin, a lot of those storms don't, they don't necessarily
all make it down to the mouth, delivering sediment to the Colorado River.
Um And so as a supplier of sediment, it's a little less reliable now than
the than the upstream Priya River is. Um And because of its location
further downstream, um we focus management on the Priya River and the
upstream reach because it's the reach and the greatest amount of sediment
deficit and because the system is large, it's also a bit of ok, we need to
constrain confine the problem a little bit to make it manageable. And
that's been sort of the manageable thing is to tackle to, to, to run the
protocol around the, the Priya River and Marble Canyon and then we monitor
the effects for the whole system. So we, there's a bit of um manage it for
the, for the upstream segment and then monitoring downstream, hoping that
it, it, it, it, it performs well down there too.
So when we have a high flow event, you get both erosion and deposition
depending on what kind of flow there is how much sediment there is where
you know which beach we're talking about, which reach. Um And your goal as
I understand it, then in designing these HFES high flow experiments is to
maximize the deposition to do beach building flows as they used to be
called and minimize beach erosion because you're trying to build sediment
on the shore on the beaches. Um There's a number of the people that we've
interviewed have suggested that the HFES are not working and there's as
much erosion or more than sediment. I think it's probably changed over
time. And you're the expert who can probably answer that question for us.
Have you gotten better at being able to figure out how to make the HFS
deposit more than they erode?
Well, we can't control what they do. Um uh You open the dam. Uh But what
the, the, the reality is, I mean, the HFE, every time we've done one, they
have resulted in more deposition of sandbars than erosion. So the HFES
themselves do cause sandbar deposition. Um They're in the upper reach. I
assume you're talking about the whole river and we've seen this now, we've
, we've done enough of them that, um, there may be sites that get smaller
but by and large, probably two thirds of the sites we monitor at least get
larger with, hhhfe. Um, a few get smaller, but that would be a pretty
small percentage and a few don't change much. Uh, but most of them, uh,
get bigger, I think. What, what, what a lot of people see and what we, you
know, honestly do have to, we do tell them is that a lot of these, the
bars then begin eroding again immediately, um Or, you know, or within
several months. Um So that by the time you're maybe a year later, uh a lot
of the sites are back to where they started. Um And so
that is uh really part of the process. I mean, these are unstable sand
bars in a, in a river with fluctuating flows in a river that's constantly
changing. Um In the pre damp system, the bars weren't stable, they would
be, the river would deposit huge sand bars and native road. Um I think in
some sense, the objective is for the bars to erode. Um If you didn't
intend for the bar to erode, there's no point in, in building them. I mean
, it's, it's a dynamic system and the erosion is part of the process that
I think we should be managing for. Um because without the erosion, then,
then they become locked in and stable. And so one of the other issues
that's going on and you probably talk to people about is the vegetation
encroachment. Well, some of these bars that are the most active, which
means that they get big and then they erode, those are bars where the
vegetation hasn't become established and, and can be large sandbars. And
so another way to look at it is by doing the HFES, we have bars that are
larger for a good fraction of the year than they would be without the HFES.
So they don't immediately erode to nothing. They're there for people to
use for a good chunk of the year. Um And that we have to recognize that
we're managing for a dynamic system and not a static like the bars are
perfect and they will be this way all the time. Uh That's an excellent
explanation. I appreciate that. Yeah, we had a recent interview with
somebody who was suggesting that um the beaches haven't changed that much
and once you create a beach, it'll be there for 100 years. And that was
different than anything I ever heard from anybody else before. Um Does,
does the research support that assertion or not? Well, you know, and the
dam has helped with that. There are things that have been there for 100
years now because the dam doesn't, the flows don't get high enough to
erode them. So, but we're not going to build those beaches either because
the dam doesn't get high enough to build them. You mean the floods don't
get high, right. The floods, sorry? Yeah, the floods, the floods released
from the dam don't get high enough to build bars. That would be up high.
So there are portions of sand bars now that are completely overgrown with
vegetation locked in place and will not change unless, you know, all hell
breaks loose and we get snow all winter and, and they fill the reservoir
and have to release, you know, floods like they did in the 19 eighties.
But until that happens, there are things that won't change. Um So what
we're managing with the HFES are a portion of the sand bars that are
dynamic that do change. Um And those uh the ones that are static that the
HFES don't affect tend to be the ones that are stabilized by vegetation.
And then there are the portions that are um the active bars that the hfes
do rebuild. Um You know, one of the other things I've, you know, re remind
that I point out when we're talking about what the hfes do on the sand
bars is that a lot of the places are affected by smaller scale processes
like uh hill slope runoff that uh that cuts gullies across the sand bars,
um Even even small tributaries that form and, and erode a big gully in
some of the campsites and sandbars and then the hfes can come along and,
and repair those gullies and fill it in and basically create a new sandbar
that might not be all that much bigger than the bar was there before. But
it's been essentially renovated.
One of the other um complaints we've heard from uh people we've
interviewed um in uh involve um the fact that the HFES are bringing a lot
of sediment from the river bed itself farther to down to the lower river
and where it gets close to Lake Mead and the flow is slower, it drops that
sediment. And so places like Diamond Creek where the wallop I try has a
river running operation. They're talking about sediment, you know, making
it difficult for their business operations.
Is there truth to the argument that the hes are causing problems for
people in the lower river and what might be done about that? Well, we
could, I mean that um so I think what's going on with that is that the
they are in the part of the river. This is essentially the part of the
river that has sometimes been underwater in Lake Mead. So it's the
transition from the Colorado river to Lake Mead. So it's the segment of
the canyon that has the opposite problem from most of Grand Canyon. Most
of Grand Canyon is in sediment deficit because as I said, the dam blocks
90% of what was entered before the dam was built. And so it's a condition
of, of lack of sediment. Well, the sediment that we do have is going
downstream and all of it goes to Lake Mead. And so they're in the, they're
in the realm of the zone of sediment deficit. That area is essentially a
river delta. So it's in a great a grading system and um all the flows
transport the sediment downstream. Um One thing we've seen when we, when
we look at the years with and without HFES, it, it doesn't really matter
whether or not we do have an HFE or the, the, the an HFE doesn't really
affect the total amount of sediment that goes past. Um say Diamond Creek,
which is our downstream gauging station, which is um you know, 225 miles
downstream from these ferry, about 30 or maybe 3040 miles upstream from
the, from the reach of maybe sediment accumulation that the, that the wall
are concerned about, but about the same amount of sediment goes past that
point. Whether or not we do an HFE because what the HFE does, it doesn't,
it doesn't really change the total amount of sediment that gets carried
downstream. It changes the timing of when that occurs. Um Because the
Prius deliver a lot of sediment, it's relatively fine. It accumulates on
the bed of the river. And then we do an HFE and that picks up the sediment
and deposits in sand bars and moves them downstream and it also coarsens
the bed of the river at the same time. So as that sediment is, is, is
picked up and the high flows, they, they coarsen the bed of the river. So
then after an HFE, you get relatively lower transport rates than before.
If you don't do an HFE, you still got all that fine sediment there. But
then we go into the winter season of high power plant operations to
generate electricity. And so those high fluctuating flows instead, they
transport the sand downstream. So whether we do an HFE to move the sand or
do high power plant operations in the winter, the sand is going to go
downstream and it's going to go to Lake Mead either way. So it's not so
much a question of the volume that's going into this reach where they're
having the navigation issues. It's the, it's, it's the timing and the
flows that cause its redistribution. And so,
so it doesn't mean that they don't have that there isn't a problem there.
And the HFES could have a role in determining the, or the, the relative
distribution of that sediment. Um It's possible that the HFES make it
better than it would be without the HFES. Um It could be even worse. Um
And so that is something we um um haven't studied in detail down there,
but it's, it's something that I actually uh proposed a project in the last
work plan to work on this issue. But the budgets were tight and that one
didn't quite get through. We'll put it again this time. But um the idea
there would be to look at at how um the sediment in that reach, how the
distribution of the sediment is affected by different dam operations. Um
There is a problem there because it is going to be a zone of sediment just
like the upstream reaches a zone of deficit no matter what we do. There is
a zone of sediment accumulation no matter what we do. Um And it's not just
affected by um by dam operations, is also affected by the fact that it's,
it's um it's cutting down into the former Lake Mead Delta. You know, the,
the lake Mead has now dropped a lot. And so the river is, is, is, is, is
in into the uh the uh the the accumulation, the accumulated sediment. So,
um
yeah, it's, it's, it's a difficult problem um in terms of, of how to,
whether or not it's even possible to, to find a, an operation scenario
that would help create them, uh help create their, improve their
navigation channel is really what it's about. It's, it's tricky, you know
, these are the things that engineers deal with on the big rivers where
they're trying to get barges upstream and downstream, but they end up
doing things like building uh building wing dikes and groins and things
that, that, that, that concentrate the stream flow into the center of a
river channel. But those are big engineering works, but those are the,
those are the kinds of things that are done to deal with those problems. I
did a river trip through Grand Canyon last year. My very first one, last
summer we went all the way to um was that Hayden ferry or some Pierce
Pierce ferry? Right? And um it was rather eerie floating through that
stretch below Diamond Creek and above Pearce ferry where you're in size
down in, in the river beneath these giant plateaus of sediment that are
constantly um falling into the river. And there was at one point when we
were floating through this stretch of river and, and the plateau of
sediment was probably a couple of 100 ft high and a wind, a gust of wind
set off a collapse of a piece of it. And, and more and more, it's like a
uh an avalanche of snow on a steep mountain slope. It just came pouring
down and hit the water and sent a, a blast of dusty water and wind across
the river right into one of our boats. It was, it was dangerous and you
saw that, you were there on one trip in one year and saw that. And I've,
when I've been down there, I've seen that. So that's something that is
happening constantly. And so uh it's, it's, it's entirely possible that
the amount of sediment falling into the river off of those high cut banks
from the form that was the bed of lake. Right? Um, is, is, uh, is an equal
contributor to the, to the navigation problem down there. Yeah, we
actually got stuck at one point. We couldn't figure out which way to get
around. It was a very wide river and a big sand bar. We didn't know
whether to go or right. We took the wrong path and we had to drag our, our
raft and that's the problem that they're talking about. So it's a
legitimate, it's a serious problem that they have. Um It's not going to be
an easy solution. So, were you part of the effort to create that
phenomenal website that US GS has that shows before and after pictures
from the high flow experiments, there's a website that US GS has. Did you
help to develop that? And can you tell us a little bit about that? Well,
thanks. Yeah. No, that's, that's our website. Um uh I can't take credit
for doing the technical side, but that's my project in terms of, of the
collecting those images and making it happen, getting them on there.
That's, that's one of the things that my project does. And so um where
that came about was um actually, when I first started, uh um there's a
long history of using cameras at, at our uh monitoring sites that goes
back to the early days when they were first studying these sites in the 19
nineties, the scientists at the time recognized pretty quickly that they
were collecting data. You know, even if they were doing trips, a couple,
you know, there were years when they were doing several river trips a few
months apart. But even with that level of frequency visiting monitoring
sites, they recognized a lot was happening when they weren't there. And so
they put up at that time, it was um analog old film cameras, just, just
handheld uh um small um little point and shoot film cameras that had an
interval meer that they could put on them. That would, I think the most
they could do is set the interval meer to take a picture every 24 hours.
Set it up in a, they put it in a little animal can with a window and hit
go whatever time they did it was when it took the first picture and then
24 hours thereafter till the role of film was gone. So they'd at least get
something, they'd maybe they, they'd get uh 24 days or if they had a 36
days worth of, of, of, of images from the site. And they, they kept those
going on and off from in the 19 nineties and two thousands. And then when
I started in 2008, uh a colleague in um uh a different uh US TS branch
here had developed a uh a digital system and we started putting those in,
in uh in 2008 for the 2008 high flow experiment. And uh they were great.
Uh we're very reliable. So we decided to um put them at every all of our
monitoring sites. So you get hundreds and hundreds of pictures. So between
2008 and 2012 is when we expanded to put, getting one at every one of our
sites and we program them to take um actually where they're taking five
pictures a day because we want to get um well, because memory card space
now is, is is cheap. So why not take enough pictures? And then by doing
that, we get a range of flows and lighting conditions. So then we can pick
from the photos it takes which ones have the best combination of of river
flow level and lighting. And then we pick the one from those. We pick some
and put on the website for seeing what the HFES do. Our younger readers
are probably gonna want to know what we mean by roll of film.
Um How could somebody find that uh what's the easiest way for somebody to
find that website? Because it really is remarkable. You can look at these
different beaches and, and you just get a picture before the high flow
experiment and, and then during and then after and really see how those
flows alter uh the morphology of the river. Yeah, it's just on our website
, www.gcmrc.gov/sandbar/sandbar.
Ok. It's a redirect now. I don't think it's, that's the actual site
they've changed. The government has kicked us around a bit in terms of how
our websites are set up. But that still works. Yeah. I'd like to get a
permanent link for that, um, to link to our website because that's
something that I dreamed of doing because I love Repot Gray. It's one of
my most interesting ways of documenting change over time is Repot. My
colleague at a Su Mark Klett did some of the best and most interesting
repot work at on the Grand Canyon decades ago. And uh when I saw what you
guys had done, I thought, OK. Well, I don't have to do that now. It's
really a remarkable resource. So thank you for putting it together. And uh
you know, thanks for that. And um we also, in addition to just those
paired or, or the, the time series photos at each site, we also have a
site um uh kind of a collaborative effort with the Grand Canyon River
Guides Association. So they started a program back. I think they started
it with the 1996 controlled flood and they call it the adopt a beach
program. And this is where um river Guides volunteer to take a camera and
take repeat pictures of, of, of their favorite campsite or beach and they
do it throughout the season. And then we put those, uh we also put those
photos on the website. They're not, they're not like our remote cameras
are fixed location. So they're perfect matches from one to the next. These
are more, you know, the guy gets, picks a spot and takes a photo there and
kind of approximate that spot's underwater. So, yeah, so they, but they
show the same sites and so that, that, that's also on our website to look
at. Great, great. Um All right. Well, um again, historians like to think
about and evaluate change over time. And um so that's what I want to turn
to for a minute and ask you to reflect on how sediment research has
changed over time. You've talked about what we do now and how we've
perfected those processes to better predict outcomes. But can you give us
a little historical sense if you can about, you know, the questions we
were asking early on versus the questions we're asking today and what
we've learned. Um
But I think what we've,
lot of the questions are similar. Um But what I think we've learned about
, um you know, like I said, the, the, the, the basics of the, the sandbar
management on one level are pretty simple in the sense of it's the, it's,
it's, it's needing the flows to build a sandbar and then it's what's the
supply condition. So a big part of the initial focus was guessing what the
supply condition was. What we do now is we actually measure it and we're
setting ourselves up to actually know what the supply condition is. So
it's kind of the, the, the scientists working on this. Um When we first
started, they recognized what the most important thing was and that is how
much sand is there and, and then what does it take to use it to, to build
sand bars and keep it there? But what we do now is we, but they had to
rely on extremely sparse measurements and um essentially very simple
modeling prediction guesses of what the supply conditions were and their,
their predictions vary greatly from the sand, you know, sand, the sand is
just accumulating on the bed of the river and we just need to run floods
and we'll be fine um to under to them, there is then going the opposite
direction saying no, no, no, there's a downward spiral and there's almost
no sand left and the system is about to be completely reamed out. And I
think what we've learned now is that there's a potential, at least under
the conditions we've seen. So by, by going from the or implementing this
um this high flow protocol period where we do the repeat high flows. We
got pretty lucky in, in the timing of things and we'll see how luck
carries us into the future. But the luck we had is that since 2012, when
this started, we have had most years with good amounts of sand inputs from
the Pria River um average or above and we have had a approximately average
dam release volumes. So those two things are the two key ingredients to
what happens to the sand supply you get. If dam release volumes are high,
we get a lot of export. And that happened one that happened in 2011. But
since 2011, the release volumes have been at about an average amount that
has allowed sand to either be maintained in the system or accumulate. So
what I think we've really learned is that and, and now that we can
actually measure the sand budget and we measure it buyer uh measurements
of sand transport in the river and we measure it by um actually going out
and mapping the bed of the river and then repeating that map of the bed of
the river at a second point in time and looking at the difference and
seeing how much has the bed of the river changed and has this the sand
storage supply in the bed of the river changed? And
so when uh 2030 years ago, they were kind of assuming or guessing what the
sand storage would do when we had a flood or under different scenarios of
annual volumes and, and tribu inputs. We're now in a position to actually
measure what the bed of the river does and see how that plays out. Um And
what we've seen is that it's in an approximate balance under these
conditions. So I think the there was a big, you know that, I mean, you you
asked about major turning points, I think, you know that 96 flood was and
what led up to it was one major turning point. I think the next one was
the recognition. And then the uh the implementation of the idea of doing
repeat high flows, which happened with the, the HFE protocol, which was
implemented in 2012. So the idea that instead of these high flows being,
being ex being one off experiments that we did once in a while, it was
turned into a uh uh an experiment that involved doing it repeatedly year
after year. And they called it a HFE high flow experiment protocol. Um And
so it's not uh but the experiment isn't what each HFE does. The experiment
is what happens if we do this for 10 or 20 years. And so that's what we're
in the middle of. And at this point. And what I think we're learning is
that if the conditions are right, it basically works. Um But it's kind of
a teeter totter balance of right now, we're uh in this position where the
inputs and the flow volumes have allowed it to work. It almost exactly as
intended as designed. Um And so what the future holds is really, it, it's
almost you get different answers. And I think it's more of a, um, almost a
personal or the answer you get might reflect more on that person's
disposition than on any basis. And because somebody who tends to be a
little bit of a pessimist will say, look, we're, we're hinging this all on
continued average inputs and above average inputs and, uh, average or
below dam releases. Well, that's not likely. So, the system is doomed is
one perspective because how can it, how can we have above average inputs
and below average dam releases? Um The, the flip side is, well, it's
worked for close to 10 years now. And so maybe, maybe these are the
average conditions that we're gonna have. Um So really the, and so that
that's kind of the, the big mystery is, it's what will happen with, you
know, we've got expectations of what, what's the uh the idea that uh that
um uh flows will be average or below average might not be that ridiculous
because predictions for the basin are for low runoff with climate change.
But um uh what else scientifically is? Let's see, is there anything else
that we need to know? I mean, you sound, it was really interesting to hear
you say at the very beginning when people start proposing these high flow
um events experiments, um they were guessing at what the results might be
and didn't have the data to actually say here's the likely outcome based
on what we've measured before. So you have to spend years and years and
years advocating for something that was a guess and then monitoring the
outcomes to refine your predictions and models to the point where now
you're saying, after maybe I don't know, what is this uh 20 years of
experiments? Now, you're saying the model is pretty robust. Um It has only
about 15% error in it for the most part. It's been working well for 10
years and we get the outcome we're looking for every time we do this
because we've been able to refine what we know and how to manage these
things. That's pretty great. So somebody might say, well, have we learned
everything we need to learn?
Have we learned everything we need to learn? Can we stop studying sediment
now and move on to something else? You know, it depends on what they, what
their next, what their objective is really. I mean, if we're comfortable
with, if we're comfortable with everything as they are and are confident
in and what the per river is gonna do in the future or what the um um
river flows would be that, that might be an argument. Um I don't, you know
, I mean, what part of what the program is interested in is, is monitoring
, you know, the results into the future Grand Canyon monitoring and
research. So, so there's that aspect of it, it's like it's keeping track
of what the system is doing and, and continuing to verify that things are
happening. Um Are there any questions or knowledge gaps in, in sediment
flow that you wish we could throw some money at to understand better? Well
, there is uh probably um uh the, the areas that we are working in on that.
Are
you mentioned the issue of, of navigation downstream? So that's one area
where there is a kind of a resource or, or a, or a, I guess a management
problem or issue that they're interested in that we don't really
understand or, and so that would be an area of research to do, to, to
learn something new about how the system is working. That that might be of
interest. Um in terms of the um the sand bars themselves. Uh One thing
we've been looking at and continue to look at is interactions between the
sand bars and vegetation. So the role that, that different vegetation
types play in either uh essentially accelerating sandbar deposition or, or
sandbar stabilization. So if they um and that could be applied towards
management, if they want to start removing vegetation or changing the
vegetation community in some way to improve the or change the way the
sandbars look or change how people can use the sandbars is, is one thing.
Um The other thing that's come up that's of interest is uh and is, I guess
, and there would maybe be in the realm of, of fine tuning how the HFES
work is, is whether we can uh by using HFES of different magnitudes, we
can cause deposition to occur in different places. And that's uh um or
whether by changing the shape of the HFE hydro graphs, if you look, if you
go to our website and look at the HFE um hydro graphs, the, the flow
releases from the dam, they all have a pretty similar shape where the
water goes straight up. You know, they increase the releases very quickly.
It's flat at the peak of the HFE and then they turn it off and it's
essentially straight down. And um so there's questions about whether if we
had different uh rates of, of like down ramp rates, so lowered the
releases slower, could we have bars that had a different shape? So some of
the river guys are interested in bars that might have a, a lower slope or
something like that. Um Was another thing um The other thing that there uh
is, is in terms of um the
um scientifically, there's quite a, quite a bit we could still understand
about. There are um I think you mentioned earlier that, you know, there,
there, the hfes don't cause every sandbar to respond the same. So there
are some bars there, there are some bars that are road with hfes or under
different conditions while some build and we don't, we still don't um
understand exactly why that is for some science, we know it has something
to do with the channel conditions probably, or, or the hydraulics being
different at different sites. And so scientifically, that's something
we're looking at and trying to explain why some eddies, some sandbar areas
, some eddies where the sandbars occur, behave differently than others. Um
And I think that can help with management. I think, uh it's, you know, I
think it's, it, it's at uh a finer level than then just. Ok, we've got the
HP protocol that generally build sand bars. Now, we're gonna look at how
we can optimize it or, or what we could do to improve more broadly
improved conditions. So those are some of the other things we're looking
at. Um but when it comes to um we're, we're gonna be starting working on
our writing up our new next three year work plan in the next few months
here. And, and so our project will, you know, we've got our, our regular
sandbar monitoring which is seeing what each HFE does and what the long
term trends are at the sandbar monitoring sites. And that involves
surveying the sites and collecting those photos. So that um is primarily a
monitoring effort. And then we do these repeat maps of the river bed,
which is, you know, OK, over the long terms, are we maintaining the sand,
the sand mass balance and that is contributing to really determining
whether or not uh what is, what are the chances that they can keep doing
this? Um Using the HFE protocol um successfully or whether they should be
doing floods more frequently. You know, if sands accumulating and things
of that, it's possible to show, well, you actually have plenty of degrees
of freedom here and you could be doing floods more liberally or you should
hold back because the, the sand is, is, is, is, is diminishing, which
means not just holding back on HFES, but considering what other operations
might be needed to maintain sand storage, if that's what they want to do.
I'm glad you mentioned that riverbed mapping. That's one of the things
that uh Jen and I um found when looking at some of your uh previous uh
published research. Um Could you talk briefly about how you map the, you
know, subsurface of the water, the river bed itself, which is, you know,
several feet to 20 or 30 ft below the surface. You can't see it when
you're floating down the river, you can't see the river bed for the most
part. Um But we need to know how much sediment is down there and, and
where it's deposited. And so you've helped to sort of innovate ways of
mapping the sediment. And you said earlier in our interview that it's like
80% or more of the sediment in the river is underwater in the river
channel, 80 to 90% of the sediment that's moved by the, I mean, it takes
the water to move it. So the sediment that the water is moving is
underwater by definition. And so it's only that little bit between, you
know, if you happen to be on the river when it's flowing at 10,000 cubic
feet per second, it's only that bit between that where the water, the
river gets at 10,000 and up to maybe the high flow stage of 35 to 40,000.
So there's, there's that window there of where the sediment is deposited
by the high flows. But that's a small slice of the sand in the system that
most of the sediment is in. Um There's deep pools in the center of the
channel and then there's deep pools in the eddies, the the the big kind of
pools of sediment. Yeah, big pools of sediment there. And, and so we map
those um and people started doing it uh as soon as the technology became
available using sonar. So we use uh sonar instruments. So those are
acoustic instruments. They generate a ping, a pulse of sound that uh is
generated by an instrument that's in the water that we hang off, you know
, suspend from the front of the boat um into the river. And um it sends a
ping down that, that sound bounces off the bed of the river, comes back to
the instrument and the instrument knows when it sent it and it measures
the time it took for it to travel and calculates the distance and uses
that to come up with uh measurements of depth. But the instruments are
actually sophisticated enough that doesn't send down one ping in one beam
, it sends down up to, I think around our instrument does 512 beams in a
swath. So just by driving down the center of the channel, you can actually
measure depth um across a large portion of the river bed as you're driving.
So in, in kind of a swath as you drive down the channel, so we can drive
these boats with these uh these uh multibeam sonar instruments up and down
the channel in a section of river and then make a topographic, essentially
a topographic map. But it's a bath metric map of the bed of the river. And
are those available on the web somewhere? Can somebody go and look at
those maps? We have two different ways. We have a map viewer on our
website that kind have to look around for it. But it's on the, the GCR CY
website. Um that has the one for right now. I think the only one that's on
there is from le ferry to or from the dam to Lee's ferry. But that's
something you can toggle around and view. And then we've got publications
with the, you can download the maps um for other segments of the river. So
that's an example of a critical resource that we didn't know anything
about because we couldn't see it and hadn't measured it and you came up
with a proposal to fund a project to map that sediment and now you're
monitoring how it changes over time so that you can be in a better
position to determine the effects of different flow levels. Yeah. No,
that's the idea that's how science works. So that's how it works. And, and
so back in uh uh when, when in the early period where they, they had a
need for a stream flow model uh to predict um just water surface
elevations at different flows throughout the canyon. And so they did that
by um they did a river trip in the 19 eighties where they measured a
channel cross section every mile or two and use that to develop the stream
flow model which is very coarse. And then the rest of it, they had to,
they had to interpolate between those cross sections and make up what the
bed of the river looked like. But so now what we've done is collected
enough data that they can do a model based on real measurements of what
the river bed is so scientifically, that's, that's another next step is is
developing models for stream flow for the, based on our measured channel
geometry. Was the funding for that river bed mapping. Did it come from the
Glen Kenny Dam Adaptive Management Program or was this some other grant or
independent? It's all from the adapt management. Um Do you have any sense
of what percentage of the research that's funded here at GCMRC comes from
the Adaptive Management program.
A small fraction or a half or a majority. Any idea. No, all of it. All of
your, well, you said you have several other, I have a couple other
problems, other grants. But when you talk GCMRC, I'm thinking, um, so I,
I'd say a a and the non Grand Canyon work has been relatively recent and
is only a few of us. Um You know, for myself, it's, you know, probably
I've had maybe a couple of years where it's been, maybe I've had maybe up
to 25 or 30% non Grand Canyon work. Now, I'm back to probably more like
90% Grand Canyon work. So Grand Canyon work funded by, by the management
program. And so, um and I think, and there are most of the people here are
100% on the, on the Adaptive Management Program. So then that is at the
center as a whole, it's probably on, you know, 90 95% of that management
program that's very significant. So with that as a background, um stepping
back a little bit again away from the specific research. Um How well do
you think the effort to link the research done here at GCMRC with decision
making policy decisions and dam operation decisions? That's the goal is to
have science to support decision making, but sometimes it's difficult to
make that connection. So just you know, tell us what you think about that
process. How has it gone? Has it changed much over time? Is it uh
fulfilling or frustrating?
Um I think it's, I mean, from my perspective, I think it's, I think it
functions pretty well. Um We have a reasonable dialogue with the
stakeholders. Um We,
uh I think, you know, I think it does vary depending on who you talk to
and things have cycles. But from my perspective, the system, the, the the
setup, uh it depends on how you
um see the objectives. But I think there's probably a good balance. I
don't know if anybody's perfectly happy with it, but I think most people
feel that it's, it's accomplishing what it was meant to. Um I think that
uh
I'm trying to think, you know, I mean, I'm pretty proud of how the
sediment program has worked in the sense that we've been able to. And, you
know, this, a lot of these contributions came from the, the work that was
done before I came here in terms of just setting up the idea of, of doing
the, the, the, the, the, the high flows and um and the way we do the
monitoring and have the, the monitoring set up. But I think it's a pretty
good example of how, how both some basic science, but a lot of applied
science has been directed directly towards management problems and it's
been used to guide it and and with, with, with, with quite a bit of back
and forth in terms of, of, of doing experiments and then, um, uh, uh,
scientists, you know, writing up publications on what happened and then
the managers doing something different. I mean, the, the, the response
isn't, I was, immediately, isn't, I was immediate and it takes time, you
know, the doing the, the HFE protocol document. I mean, if people started
saying, well, we need to do high flows more frequently than just having,
you know, every, what would, what would it have been, you know, almost
eight years between them or something. Um And that discussion started
immediately, was sort of going on when I started in 2008 and it took until
2012 for that to be implemented, but it did happen. And so I think there's
frustration with now that they've implemented the, the newest, the latest
version of management, the long term experiment and management plan, they
call it the L temp which sets the operating regime. I think, you know,
there's, there's uh one of the things that with the, with the high flow
protocol has a little bit of a, I don't know, problem, an issue right now
is that there's a kind of a growing interest in having high flows occur in
the spring. And the high flow protocol is all about maximizing the use of
the Pria River to do things in the fall because the Pria River contributes
sediment in the late summer. Um, and it makes sense in terms of
capitalizing on those Pria sand inputs to do uh, the high flows in the
fall. And that at the time, the protocol was written, spring high flows
were, uh, um, the, the biologists were recommending, recommending against
spring high flows because of a perceived impact on the, on the trout in
the chub. And, you know, the, the fish aren't my area of expertise. But
you know, the science there at the time was the spring high flows were
stimulating the trout population causing the trout population to increase.
And, and too many trout was a bit of a threat to the chub because they
might start preying on the chub or competing with the chub and cause the
chubb population to decline. And so spring high flows were the idea was we
should avoid those. And so it all fit together for this, this high flow
protocol focused on the, uh, the fall. The five flow protocol does allow
for spring high flows, but it requires the sediment trigger in the spring
which are unlikely to occur. And so they haven't occurred, there hasn't
been any sediment trigger, triggered spring high flows. And so there is
some frustration now because, well, now the idea is that, well, maybe a
spring high flow actually would be good for the biology. There's less
concern about the trout chub interaction, I think. But nevertheless, there
is interest in spring high flows. But, but we're in this little bit of a
uh a trap where the protocol makes them happen in the fall. Um So there's
some frustration with that in terms of how the system is working, how the
adapt management program has worked. And, and there's some idea that, well
, the there should be uh some flexibility to adjust how that works to make
a high flow more likely to occur in the spring. And I think that's
probably gonna happen, but, you know, we're kind of working through that
process.
And so that, I mean, and that's another reason why where the continued
interaction and involvement is important because these things, you know,
the learning keeps changing a little bit and ideas evolve and we've got to
adjust. Are there good reasons that things take so much time? You're
saying one of the frustrations is how long it took to get the um high flow
, the HFE protocol in place for an annual event. Um Should people
interpret that as you know, the typical problem of a bureaucracy or, or
can we, you know, shine a better light on that and say, well, that's how
long it took us to do the groundwork and come to a consensus and know what
we were doing was the right thing to do. What, what's your feeling about
that? Is it just frustrating delays or is there a good explanation for why
it takes so long? Oh, I think I think it's more towards the II, I think
there is a, in most cases, there's a decent explanation sometimes, you
know, where that bridge, where that transition is from, you know, enough
time to involve everybody so that everybody is involved in the decision
process and, and gets to contribute um versus something that just becomes
bureaucratic delays, it's hard to know where the, what the difference is
there but, but it does take time. So II I didn't consider the, I thought
the um the amount of time it took for that uh HFE protocol which was a few
years made sense. I mean, that it, it was, you know, lots of, lots of
discussions about how it was set up and including um different parties in
the process. Can you think of um based on your experience over the years,
can you think of any ways that um we might improve the relationship
between um science and policy and get the results of research um to be
more useful and more effective in shaping policy decisions? Well, I think
, and I don't know how realistic it is. I mean, I think one of the things
that has helped with this program is where you have uh a system set up for
a, a structure where um uh a group of, of, of both the decision makers and
stakeholders um interact with uh the scientists repeatedly over periods of
many years. So you build up relationships and people build up some
understanding of the system. And now, I mean, that works here where you
have um a big resource of big dam, you know, Glen Canyon Dam, which is of
interest to a lot of people and, and the Grand Canyon National Park, which
is a big focal point. Um I, I don't know how many different systems or
problems this model can be successfully applied to, but I think that
really does help and I think applying that where um to other problems
would, would be useful. I mean, because I think that's, I think that's a
big part of what works is when you get um uh people who are involved over
long periods of time,
um Climate change, what's uh how is climate change affecting the work that
you do? Um affecting the questions you ask, affecting the um decision
making environment of the Adaptive Management Program? Well, it's, you
know, I'd say that it's something people have been had in the back of
their minds for a while. And I think uh in terms of actually impacting
what we do, it's probably only just starting to creep in. Um I mean,
certainly the issues of, of drought and the potential for longer periods
of drought has been an issue that has uh that the water managers have been
thinking about and are now doing more about. Um it impacts, it does have a
potential. Certainly there's a lot of potential impacts on the resources
in Grand Canyon and our program, um I'm trying to, I think, um, I think
we're in terms on the, the scientists here aren't studying climate change
predictions per se so much. Although recently there has been some of that
and there's, and I don't know if you've talked to anybody who's, who's
done that work, but there's been some, some work on temperature modeling
uh throughout the Colorado River system, including Grand Canyon who's
doing that work. That's what Jack Schmidt was involved in it. But, but um
Kim Dibble, who's in the building here is, is the lead on it. Her Kim and
Charles Yule Dibble
and Charles Yule. How do you spell that? Y AC K
I can, I can look it up later. Um Yeah, they might be interesting to
interview them. And so they, they, they've looked at, you know how um
climate change scenarios might affect river temperatures on the Colorado
river basin, which is hugely important. Anybody looking at um dam
operations of climate change, that's part of the same question there is,
is, is both climate change and um dam operations on river temperatures. OK.
Um
And so the other thing that I'm looking at, not just for Grand Canyon and
almost more applied to the whole basin as a whole is, you know, if, if
river flows decline, what's the projected change on river channels? You
know, we've seen essentially, we see channel narrowing as a result of dams
because of a decrease in flood magnitudes. And we'd probably expect to see
continued channel narrowing and channel simplification if peak flows and
river flows continue to decline. So that's sort of the hypothesis on that.
That's something that um to be looking at um what else in the, you know,
and then, and then the big impact here is, is how um managers decide to
handle projections in the reality of climate change in, in managing the re
the reservoirs of the basin. And that's sort of above our outside our
realm of study here. You know, how, how the managers decide whether
they're gonna keep uh do everything they can to keep both Lake Mead and
Lake Powell operational or if one of them is gonna go down first or what,
how, how they decide to handle that issue will have a big impact. And, and
so part of what um we should be doing is I guess helping them think
through what are the impacts of either of those decisions on the river
system? Yeah, and that's part of, that's part of what this temperature
study does. It helps them think about um just from the perspective of
river temperatures, but we, in some sense, it's um it's quite obvious what
the different impacts would be. Um But uh we should be talking about that
, I'd say just 10 years ago, it was inconceivable that Glen Canyon Dam
would not be operating far into the future. And, and we're at a situation
now, just in the last few years, it's become increasingly obvious that
there is a chance that we may not be able to keep those two reservoirs
functioning. And we may decide to go to a one reservoir river management
regime at some point in the next 10 or 15 or 20 years of climate change if
this is the new normal. Um and it's, it's remarkable um kind of new
context for adaptive management and for the science that we need to do,
it's everything could be topsy turvy. So, yeah,
everything changed. Um Big question value of the adaptive management
program and adaptive management as a management philosophy regime. Do you
think it's valuable to approach things in this way?
Yeah, I, and as I said, for, I think from my perspective on how it's
worked for the sediment resource, I think it's been worked pretty well. Um
If, if, if your objective is to, you know, you have to, you know, we've
got some pretty,
really, pretty firm constraints on this system. I mean, we operate under,
I mean, well, climate change could cause big changes in how the dams
operate. But until then, until that happens, we're operating under the
system where the dam is there and it stays, it operates within its, you
know, capacity, right. So even right now with reservoir levels low, they
couldn't release more than about 40,000 cubic feet per second out of the
dam no matter how badly anybody wanted to. Um, because the, the, the
facility just can't do it. Um, and they're very tied to the annual release
volumes. So the system is pretty well boxed in, in terms of what they can
actually do. Um, and they've decided that within that they're going to try
and have this balance of resource generation of electricity, you know,
pres preservation of, of, of, of the native of aquatic species of native
fish and maintenance of the river corridor system, the sand bars and the
channel and, and uh the uplands, the archaeological sites and they,
they're trying to balance all those things and if that is your objective
is to balance all those things. Um I think this is, this, this framework
works for that because you get all the people with all their interests
coming and sharing their perspectives and grievances and you end up with
something that is
as much of a balance as there can be. You know, I think some people, uh
you know, aside from uh uh uh a decision to shift balance in one direction
or another, I think this, this kind of works for, for, for running that
balance, great as my perspective on it. So you think it should be
continued? It's been worthwhile? I think so. Yeah. Um Is there anybody
else that you haven't already mentioned that you think we should interview
? Oh,
I don't know. I don't know who else. I don't know. I'm not even, I'm not
sure what else you have interviewed. I guess it would be easier if I
should. Uh, I mean, I think from this there's a lot of people who have
been involved a long time. I mean, uh, I don't know if you've talked to,
uh, um, talked to Ted Malice who's been long time, tried very hard to
interview Ted and he has not agreed yet and if there's anything you can do
to change his mind, um, um, he's probably heard the whole thing. Um, let's
see. And, uh, you know, Carol Fritzinger might be a good person to
interview on our list. Carol Fritzinger. Yeah, she's our retired logistics
coordinator.
So she's retired from the US CS. So she, I mean, I don't, I, I feel like
I've, I've, I've spoken quite freely but she's fully released from federal
service so she can say whatever she wants and she, she will GCMRC. She did.
Yeah, until she just retired in January this year, you know, at the
beginning of this year. Um, what was it? Did she retire last year? Gosh.
And time goes by. Um, so Jack Fritz is retired. Um,
um, yeah, I mean, is there any particular area that you feel like you? I
mean, um, you probably talked to Jack, I imagine. Um, Dave Wagner, all,
all the real old Webb. No, you talked to Bob Webb. I wonder what he would
have to say. Who's Bob Webb? He's in Tucson. Oh, good. Um, so is Dave
Wagner. And um, and he was, uh, he was a, he worked, no, he, he's US TS um
, kind of a US CS sort of national research program. Retired and retired.
Um, but he worked on, on the tributaries, on debris flows and, and um, so
not so much the sand bars but on uh on flash floods from tributaries. Ok.
He did a lot of rep photography. So you should check out some of his
publications on, on, I don't know if he, he did a whole book on the
Stanton expedition. Uh, that's where I saw the name. I have seen it. And
so, um, ok, you know, on the science side, David Rubin who did a lot of
the early settlement work and you could have it and David Topping, who's
in our office here. David Rubin and David Topping. Yeah. Ok. And Scott Van
Der Ku, we should try to get right. And, uh, um, I suppose
everybody on, I mean, I'm sure there are a lot, lot depending on, uh,
everybody probably would. Um, yeah. Yeah, everybody would watch. I don't
know. There's probably lots of people that you could talk to.
Ok. Anything, uh, any last thoughts you'd like to share before we turn it
off. Uh, let's see. Well,
yeah, I think we've covered, I mean, I, I think it's been a great, uh, um
,
it's been a great privilege for me to be able to work here and to be able
to do this and be involved in a, in a, in, in both sides that this aspect
of, of um being able to do some basic research but also do applied
research that has a direct management uh focus, you know, um not every
scientist gets to, I mean, uh you know, scientists can do what they want,
but not everyone gets to be doing something that other people um are
really care about or, or, you know, actually doing something with what
you're doing on uh you know, implementing it or, or making decisions based
on what you do. So that's, I think that's a great, you know, opportunity
and privilege for, for those of us working here. Great, thanks. OK.