Display and Manipulation of Inventory Data
Affiliation
Tonto National Forest, Phoenix, ArizonaSouthwestern Region, U.S.F.S., Albuquerque, New Mexico
Issue Date
1974-04-20Keywords
Hydrology -- Arizona.Water resources development -- Arizona.
Hydrology -- Southwestern states.
Water resources development -- Southwestern states.
Sediment yield
Semi-arid climates
Soil erosion
Estimating equations
Synthetic hydrology
Rainfall-runoff relationships
Arizona
Erosion rates
Sediment discharge
Erosion
Sedimentation rates
Sediments
Sediment load
Range management
Southwest U.S.
Rainfall
Surface runoff
Rainfall-runoff relationships
Small watersheds
Streamflow
Mathematical models
Planning
Storm duration
Atterbury watershed (Tucson Ariz)
Peak flow
Universal soil loss equation
Metadata
Show full item recordRights
Copyright ©, where appropriate, is held by the author.Collection Information
This article is part of the Hydrology and Water Resources in Arizona and the Southwest collections. Digital access to this material is made possible by the Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science and the University of Arizona Libraries. For more information about items in this collection, contact anashydrology@gmail.com.Publisher
Arizona-Nevada Academy of ScienceAbstract
A stochastic model is presented for the prediction of sediment yield in a semi-arid watershed based on rainfall data and watershed characteristics. Random variables which lead to uncertainty in the model are rainfall amount, storm duration, runoff, and peak flow. Soil conservation service formulas are used to compute the runoff and peak flow components of the universal soil loss equation, and a transformation of random variables is used to obtain the distribution function of sediment yield from the joint distribution of rainfall amount and storm duration. Applications of the model are in the planning of reservoirs and dams where the effective lifetime of the facility may be evaluated in terms of storage capacity as well as the effects of land management of the watershed. In order to calibrate the model and to evaluate the uncertainties involved, experimental data from the Atterbury watershed near Tucson, Arizona were used.ISSN
0272-6106Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Development and Application of Geochronometric Techniques to the Study of Sierra Nevada Uplift and the Dating of Authigenic Sediments(The University of Arizona., 2009)This dissertation contains studies that use various geochronometric and thermochronometric techniques to better understand the post-magmatic evolution of Sierra Nevada, California. (U-Th)/He ages in apatite and zircon from Sierran batholithic rocks are used to constrain the Cenozoic exhumation of the northern part of the range. Zircon and apatite ages determined from the same samples revealed relatively rapid cooling and exhumation rates (0.2 - 0.8 km/My) from ~ 90 to 60 Ma, followed by tectonic quiescence and slow exhumation (0.02 - 0.04 km/My) from the late Paleocene to present. In addition to the thermochronology of basement lithologies, the detrital zircon geochronology of grains from preserved Eocene fluvial sediments in the central and northern Sierra Nevada was performed. U-Pb ages of detrital zircons from the deposits were found to have distributions closely matching age-area estimates of Mesozoic plutons in the Sierra Nevada, suggesting that Eocene river systems were draining local Sierran catchments and likely had steeper axial gradients than has been proposed. Provenance analysis of the Eocene sediments is used to provide constraints on the paleotopography of the Sierra Nevada and inferred range-wide Cenozoic uplift.In addition to the Sierra Nevada work, this dissertation also contains studies that focus on the development of the K-Ca system as a geochronometric technique suitable for dating the deposition of sedimentary sequences. We present a new method for measuring Ca isotopic ratios using a multi-collector ICP-MS equipped with a hexapole collision cell. Isobaric argon interferences are minimized via gas phase reactions in the collision cell. The reproducibility of Ca ratio measurements is found to be ~ 0.02 % (RSD), which is comparable to high precision TIMS techniques and an order of magnitude improvement over single collector ICP-MS techniques using a similar reaction cell method. K-Ca ages of glauconite and K-rich evaporites are determined in order to evaluate the usefulness of the K-Ca system as a sedimentary geochronometer. K-Ca ages in both glauconite and K-salts are found to be variable and significantly younger than documented depositional ages. Reported ages, however, are thought to be recording important basinal thermal histories and recrystallization events.
-
A Spatial Decision Support System for Economic Analysis of Sediment Control on Rangeland Watersheds(The University of Arizona., 2005)Spatial decision support systems (SDSS) integrate the state of the art technology, such as GIS, database and distributed models into decision support systems to support geospatial analysis that is particularly useful for watershed management, such as TMDL development on watersheds required by the Clean Water Act. This dissertation focuses on the development of a SDSS to assess the economic and environmental impacts from various best management practices (BMPs) in reducing sediment yield on rangeland watersheds.The SDSS included three major parts: the models, database and web-based interfaces. The model part is the core of the SDSS that provides the functionality of watershed economic analysis. The model maximized the profit of a representative ranch assumed to cover the whole watershed with the constraints of production technology, resource, sediment control objectives and sustainable utilization. A watershed was spatially segmented into basic units, each unit with similar plant growth and forage utilization. There are two major types of models, static and dynamic. Each model type supported variations in plant growth, grazing and ranch operations. Upland erosion was estimated through RUSLE2 and the sediment yield of a watershed was estimated from upland erosion and sediment delivery ratios for each basic unit. GAMS programs were used to solve the optimization models. The SDSS provides a platform to automatically implement the models. The database was the major tool in managing spatial and non-spatial data. A series of customized web pages were developed to support users' inputs, watershed analysis and result visualization. The embedded procedures were integrated into the SDSS to support analytical functionality, including geospatial analysis, model parameterization and web page generation.The SDSS was used to assess sediment control on the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed. The SDSS was parameterized primarily using publicly available data and a preliminary validation was made. The SDSS functionality was illustrated through eight applications. The results showed that given recent prices, new infrastructure practices would cause a financial burden to ranches. Better grazing management may provide an economic alternative to meet the sediment control objective and cost sharing could provide ranchers the incentives to participate in conservation plans.
-
Flood Processes in Semi-arid Streams: Sediment Transport, Flood Routing, and Groundwater - Surface Water Interactions(The University of Arizona., 2007)Flooding in semi-arid streams is highly variable but distinguished from its humid counterpart in terms of forcing conditions, landscape response, flood severity, and stream-aquifer connectivity. These floods have the potential for great benefit in a water-limited environment, but also great devastation when powerful floods encounter human infrastructure. This dissertation employs an integrative approach to address several facets of flooding in semi-arid streams. In particular, information from field sampling during flood events combined with modeling are used to evaluate the processes of post-disturbance sediment transport, flood routing, transient bank storage, and stream disconnection. The major findings show: (1) Suspended sediment composition in floods following wildfire depends on the number, timing, and intensity of preceding storms and flood events, implicating overland flow hillslope processes as a dominant mass wasting mechanism (2) Isotopic chemographs for two representative intense convective storm events demonstrate that the flash flood bore develops from predominantly high elevation event water that overcomes, incorporates, and pushes baseflow to the front of the hydrograph peak (3) Isotope information combined with a plug-flow model can simulate this flood bore mixing process simultaneously in two separate canyons in the basin in order to calculate the timing and quantity of flow; this could be a useful tool for watersheds that are not extensively instrumented, or for calibrating a more complex or distributed model, (4) For a stream connected to an underlying aquifer, a circulation pattern develops at the onset of flooding that causes an upwelling of antecedent water into the unsaturated zone, challenging the assumptions of one dimensional, lateral flow and transport into the streambank, and (5) For small stream-aquifer disconnections, large increases in infiltration, large decreases in seepage, and a dominantly vertical profile for floodwater were observed. This implies that a stream that supports a wide riparian corridor may be in danger of vegetation die-offs with even shallow depletions of the groundwater table.
