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The upper Colorado River system is the habitat of several endangered fish: Kendall Warm Springs dace, Colorado squawfish, humpback chub, and bonytail chub. The single most important factor contributing to the decline of these species has been the construction and operation of dams and reservoirs, which have effected flow, temperature, chemistry, biota, and migration routes. Water depletion amounting to about 25% of the total has also had similar effects, particularly by eliminating the backwater nursery areas. A predicted decrease in agricultural use and increase in energy development use would decrease the amount of used irrigation water percolating back into the groundwater and streams. In addition, water allocated...
Regional transport of water and dissolved constituents through heavily regulated river systems is influenced by the presence of reservoirs. Analysis of seasonal patterns in solute fluxes for salinity and nutrients indicates that in-reservoir processes within large storage reservoirs in the Rio Grande and Colorado basins (southwestern USA) are superimposed over the underlying watershed processes that predominate in relatively unregulated stream reaches. Connectivity of the aquatic system with the landscape is apparently disrupted by processes within the reservoir systems; these processes result in large changes in characteristics for solute transport that persist downstream in the absence of significant inputs. Additionally,...
Organic carbon (OC) burial in lacustrine sediments represents an important sink in the global carbon cycle; however, large-scale OC burial rates are poorly constrained, primarily because of the sparseness of available data sets. Here we present an analysis of OC burial rates in water bodies of the conterminous U.S. (CONUS) that takes advantage of recently developed national-scale data sets on reservoir sedimentation rates, sediment OC concentrations, lake OC burial rates, and water body distributions. We relate these data to basin characteristics and land use in a geostatistical analysis to develop an empirical model of OC burial in water bodies of the CONUS. Our results indicate that CONUS water bodies sequester...
A nested sampling network on the Colorado (CR) and Missouri Rivers (MR) provided data to assess impacts of large-scale reservoir systems and climate on carbon export. The Load Estimator (LOADEST) model was used to estimate both dissolved inorganic and organic carbon (DIC and DOC) fluxes for a total of 22 sites along the main stems of the CR and MR. Both the upper CR and MR DIC and DOC fluxes increased longitudinally, but the lower CR fluxes decreased while the lower MRs continued to increase. We examined multiple factors through space and time that help explain these flux patterns. Seasonal variability in precipitation and temperature, along with site-level concentration versus discharge relationships proved to...
Recently,the United States Bureau of Reclamation agreed to increase springreleases from Upper Colorado River Basin reservoirs to create amore natural flow regime in the lower Gunnison River andUpper Colorado River. Fishery managers have expressed concern that newoperations could change reservoir conditions and jeopardize popular and economicallyimportant reservoir sport fisheries. This study attempts to predict howone aspect of reservoir conditions, thermal structure, might respond tonew dam operations at Blue Mesa Reservoir aimed at addressingdownstream ecological concerns. A one-dimensional thermal model (CE-THERM) is appliedto simulating thermal effects of ?traditional? and proposed ?new? damoperation scenarios....