Catching up on the MFJD

The internet was down on Saturday (7/12) and Sunday (7/13) my day wrapped up around 10pm. This will be a long entry to catch up on the last couple of days.

Saturday: July 12 –

Woke up and it was below freezing. Hard thick frost on everything and the water left in the tea kettle on our camp stove had a frozen cap. But it was a beautiful morning. I walked the lower part of Granite Boulder creek to its confluence with the Middle Fork John Day River. The grass and forbs along the creek are healthy and tall because the Tribes fence all cattle out of the water ways on their property. There was such a frost on everything that my shoes were white with tiny ice crystal knocked off the vegetation as I walked through. Watched the sunrise over the valley next to the MFJD……..it was a good morning.

It was a long successful day of field work as well. Pat and I ran through the first set of data collection protocol with the Total Station Survey unit and collected a ton of data in the upper MFJD Tribes land (known as the Forrest Reach). A lot of what this field work stint is about is setting up these protocol and figuring out how to use the Total Station for a portion of the data we need. I have used a lot of survey equipment but this is my first time on the Total Station. Awesome to learn how to use it – it calculates elevation and azimuth for you as you go along taking your points and the data logger attached to it allows you to configure the data so you can download it easily into other mapping software (ie. GIS). It is the most accurate survey system available right now and we are going to be integrating the data into laser elevation imagery of the land surface out here (LiDAR). This will allow us to map the before and then monitor the major and really minor changes to the channel and landscape from the “restoration structures” that are going in.

Pat at the Total Station

Polly with the rod and prism (note my AWESOME rod handling technique)

One person runs the survey unit and one person is in the channel or on the floodplain identifying a slew of features (pools, riffles, boulders, bank full, 08 high water mark, etc). The identifier surveys out the characteristics by holding a survey rod with a prism on top that the Total Station locks to when taking points.

Finished up about 6pm because our battery on the Data Logger ran out. We detoured on our way back to camp and drove up the Forest Service road along Granite Boulder Creek. This took us up the mountain through a beautiful steep draw. The vegetation changed to an amazing diversity of trees and undergrowth that was similar to some of the places I have seen in the high Cascades (vine maple, fir, mountain hemlock, grand fir and columbines). Came to a road crossing where the Forest Service had installed a new fish-passage culvert. It was one of the biggest and best I have seen. The idea is that it doesn’t disturbs channel form (slope, connectivity, and bed) a lot less then the old-fashioned round culverts.

Watched the moon and stars from my hammock after dinner for about an hour and went to bed early (9:30pm).

There is such a temperature swing here – from below freezing to 94F on Sunday.

Sunday: July 13^th

Frosty morning again. Not quite as cold as Saturday though.

Completed our survey protocol out on the Forrest reach today -- yeah.

The restoration structures that are being constructed are what they call “engineered large woody debris.” They are placing trees, root wad pointed upstream slightly and in the stream, in the floodplain. They’ll dig trenches and place a couple of the trees within the floodplain and then cover them back up and place a couple of more on top of that (free floaters). This is suppose to supply the channel with more habitat for the low populations of native spawning Chinook. The salmon are really important to the tribes – culturally and politically. On the Forrest Reach of the MFJD it was grazed heavily, the channel was confined by placed rock in spots, and the trees were removed to increase graze-able land. The tribes have had the property for about 4 years now and they have excluded cattle from the entire reach to help it recover, they have done mixed tree/shrub plantings (last year) and now they are trying to help the channel back into a complex system with a diversity of habitat (scour pools for staging; gravel riffles for spawning; vegetation for shade and downed wood in the stream for cover). The tribes brought in the University of Oregon to be a 3^rd party monitoring arm of the project to determine if the restoration is reaching its goals.

Sunday night we attended a potluck dinner at the home of Brian and Sarah (the property managers for the tribes). They invited up the folks managing The Nature Conservancy land downstream about 8 miles. Along with us and the three graduate students from Oregon State University dong stream temperature research, it was an evening of good company and incredibly tasty food.

Monday: July 14^th

My tent before sunrise (the round tiny orange structures in the background) next to the meadow of wildflowers. I have become quite fond of this meadow.