Wednesday, August 11, 2010

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me

So, we had a significant precipitation event and I decided to make the Friday circuit to check the stream. It turns out the flow was much higher and had turned the water a light brown. This is what it looked like on Thursday before the rain ...


And on Friday morning after the rain the same section of the stream looked like this (and according to measurements was flowing twice as fast and was twice as deep.)


I made the trip up to the upstream site and the culvert. I did not meet up with any animals this time but I did notice some changes.


The hay bale containment barrier is new and there seems to be a bit of a design flaw in the landscaping since it would appear that the local terrain is draining to the side of the storm sewer rock pit. To my eyes it would appear that the rock pit goes too low and has a conflict with the local water table. There seems to have been some work done on the rock pit as well with the part just below the outfall made of larger stones ending in a meter high rock pile that is followed by a flatter rock field made of smaller rocks down to the stream edge ending in a landscaping fabric hoarding. I think we are going to see the stream back fill into the swampy area and create a pond or stagnant overflow catchment upstream to the rock field. Maybe.

On a different note we have had a game camera sitting in the lab for some time now and I decided to unpack the camera and field test it before the semester starts. I set it up tied to a tree at site 3 just downstream from the culvert. This is where I have run into the mist wildlife but over the three days it was set up it mostly took pictures of me measuring the stream and two dudes with dogs. There is one very faint image made at two in the morning that might be a raccoon but it was not the parade of wildlife that I expected. Oh well.


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