Tracking agricultural water in Wyoming: Quantifying return flows to streams
Ginger Paige Associate Professor Bea Gordon Former master’s student Niels Claes Ph.D. candidate Hydrologic Sciences Scott Miller Professor and head Department of Ecosystem Science and Management Andy Parsekian Assistant Professor Department of Geology and Geophysics and Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering
High-tech tools gaze below soil surface to track and measure water
W
ater management in the western United States and Wyoming in particular has much in common with real-estate markets – it is significantly influenced by timing and location. Most water in Wyoming comes from spring snowmelt flowing from high alpine mountains down to the shrub and grasslands lower in the watersheds, and over 70 percent of available surface water comes from snowmelt in May and June.
In 2015, researchers from the Wyoming Center for Environmental Hydrology and Geophysics (see at uwyo.edu/epscor/wycehg/) initiated a project to determine the quantity and time of return flow in Bear Creek, a tributary of the East Fork of the Wind River (Figure 1), and to track near surface flow processes. The project is in collaboration with the Wyoming Game and Fish
ecosystem science and management
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