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Water Quality And Physical Habitat Effects On Trout Distribution And Abundance In Silver Bow Creek, Joe Naughton

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

Uncontrolled disposal of mining wastes in the Butte mining districts resulted in extirpation of fishes from Silver Bow Creek throughout the 20^th century. Superfund remediation has been ongoing in the watershed since 1998 and is near completion. Overall, metal concentrations in Silver Bow Creek are reduced from pre-remediation levels however. However, the stream is influenced by municipal sewage, and during midsummer, hypoxia has been observed at night downstream from the wastewater discharge. Despite the water quality problems, six fish species, including three sensitive salmonids, now inhabit Silver Bow Creek. To evaluate the success of remediation in reestablishing salmonid …

It's A Drag: Understanding Current And Cladophora, Kyle Flynn

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

The ecology of the filamentous green algae Cladophora glomerata has been studied in the Clark Fork River for many years due to its influence on dissolved oxygen, pH, aquatic organisms, and recreational use. While a number of factors contribute to algal persistence and dominance, the influence of fluid velocity on resource acquisition (i.e., nutrient uptake) and removal by shear stress are important processes affecting Cladophora distribution in space and time. A basic introduction to mechanistic principles governing removal and nutrient uptake is provided, followed by techniques to examine such relationships in rivers. Techniques include use of low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles …

Nutrient Dynamics In The Upper Clark Fork River, H. Maurice Valett, M. Peipoch

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

Remediation and restoration of the Upper Clark Fork River (UCFR) is occurring under nutrient-rich conditions associated with non-point source and sewage treatment inputs. Restoration is designed to enhance river-floodplain interaction with potential influences on river nutrient loads. Assessment of the long-term record for nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) illustrate that the upper river consistently exceeds water quality standards for total N (300 μg N/L) and total P (20 μg/L P). However, data from the past three decades also show substantial reduction in nitrate-N loads during summer and autumn despite inputs from tributaries and sewage treatment facilities. During these time periods, …

The Clark Fork Watershed Education Program, Rayelynn Connole

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

No abstract provided.

Two-Dimensional Hydraulic Modeling Of Dam Breach Inundation, Joseph T. Smith

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

There are about 194 permitted dams within the Clark Fork Watershed in Montana alone; 51 of these are classified as high hazard. Congruent with state and federal guidelines, all of these high hazard dams are required to have an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) that includes dam breach inundation mapping. The purpose of having an EAP is to protect public safety. Unfortunately, many of these EAP’s are outdated and contain inaccurate data.

Historically, one-dimensional hydraulic modeling software, such as HEC-RAS, has been the primary method to model dam breach inundation. One-dimensional models have yielded good results, but can be challenging to …

Groundwater Conditions And Use In The Clark Fork And Kootenai River Basins, John Lafave

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

The Clark Fork and Kootenai River basins lie within the Northern Intermontane Basin physiographic province. The intermontane basins are structurally downdropped relative to the surrounding mountains and filled with basin-fill deposits. Groundwater occurs within the unconsolidated to poorly consolidated Tertiary and Quaternary basin-fill deposits, and to a lesser extent in the fractured bedrock in the surrounding mountains. More than 70,000 wells within the Clark Fork/Kootenai River basins withdraw water from aquifers found in unconsolidated to poorly consolidated deposits and surrounding fractured bedrock. Most wells (92 percent) provide water for domestic purposes, but account for only 9 percent of annual groundwater …

Nutrient Loading And Proposed Bmp’S For Browns Gulch, Sarah Hamblock, Raja Nagisetty, Kumar Ganesan, Bill Drury

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

Nutrients are essential to support stream ecosystems, however, if present in excess may lead to algal blooms, excessive aquatic weeds, and alternation of natural aquatic ecosystems. Silver Bow Creek (SBC), the headwater stream of the Clark Fork River, is listed as impaired for nutrients (total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP)), by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. Browns Gulch is a major tributary to SBC, and drains agricultural and forested lands. To meet target nutrient TMDL concentrations in SBC, the tributary load inputs of TN and TP must be reduced by 93% in Browns Gulch. To identify the sources …

Flathead River To Lake Initiative, Constanza Von Der Pahlen, Aaron Clausen, Kris Tempel, Laura Katzman

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

The Flathead River to Lake (R2L) Initiative is a collaborative effort that brings people together to conserve and restore the Flathead River and Flathead Lake's natural heritage – excellent water quality, outstanding scenic and recreational values, highly productive farmlands, and abundant fish and wildlife--through education, conservation and restoration projects. The R2L Initiative focuses on the main stem of the Flathead River from Bad Rock Canyon to the North Shore of Flathead Lake in Northwest Montana due to significant development threats and high resource values in this area. Our goal is to protect and enhance critical wetlands, riparian areas, floodplains, the …

Mitigating Hydropower Impacts On Bull Trout In The Lower Clark Fork, Sean Moran, Shana Bernall

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

During relicensing of its Clark Fork River dams, Avista Corporation cooperatively developed the Native Salmonid Restoration Plan (NSRP) to address mitigation actions for the ESA listed bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus). The NSRP identified aspects including: fish passage, genetics, non-native species, and habitat, among others, to be addressed in an adaptive management progression. Upstream passage began in 2001 with bull trout captured below Cabinet Gorge Dam being radio tagged and released upstream. Subsequent development of a genetic baseline facilitated transport to the region of origin, and parentage analysis confirmed contribution of upstream transported bull trout. Downstream juvenile bull trout …

Fostering Watershed Stewardship, Mike Koopal

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

The Whitefish Lake Institute (WLI) has fostered local and regional watershed stewardship through a combination of scientific discovery, educational programs, and community activities. We believe that capacity building not only benefits the organization and its mission, but supports partners of diverse interests to yield lasting change. Watershed groups must stay relevant to their constituents while creatively engaging the demographics hardest to reach.

2015 marks WLI’s 10 year anniversary. Initially, WLI focused on key programs to build credibility and trust in the community and with partners. Later, WLI developed a baseline monitoring program for the Whitefish Lake watershed to identify trends, …

Metals Tmdl Development For The Mainstem Clark Fork River, Eric Sivers

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has developed total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for metals in Silver Bow Creek and the Clark Fork River. TMDLs are watershed-scale pollutant budgets and are important planning tools because they provide a basin-wide context for individual pollutant sources. This context can provide a different perspective on individual point source discharges than a traditional point-of-discharge analysis and may result in different effluent limits.

The effects of decades of remediation in Butte and Silver Bow Creek are evident in trends of Clark Fork River water quality. Remediation of the Clark Fork River mainstem has begun …

Stream Restoration In The Lower Clark Fork River Basin, Ryan Kreiner

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

The Lower Clark Fork River in northwest Montana is an area characterized by lower elevation tributaries, and has been impacted by both natural and anthropogenic effects. In 1999, as Avista Corporation renewed their license for operation of two major hydroelectric facilities, stream restoration was identified as a major mitigation activity. Since then, more than 50 stream rehabilitation efforts have been attempted in approximately 15 drainages with varying degrees of success. Goals of these projects have ranged from bank stabilization and fish habitat enhancement to sediment and temperature reduction. Future efforts will focus on areas with a high probability of success …

Trends Of Biological Integrity In The Upper Clark Fork Basin, Sean Sullivan, Wease Bollman, Daniel Mcguire

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

Benthic macroinvertebrates have been used as indicators of biological integrity in the Clark Fork River basin for over 25 years. In more recent years the efforts of multiple monitoring programs have been harmonized to create synoptic analyses of biological integrity. The collaborative efforts of state and federal agencies have reduced duplication, enhanced data comparability and increased spatial completeness of invertebrate community data. The goals of this analysis are to summarize current benthic invertebrate monitoring programs efforts in the Upper Clark Fork basin, present the findings of trends analyses at several sentinel locations in the basin, and document the longitudinal gradient …

The Flathead Watershed Sourcebook, Lori Curtis

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

Increasingly complex ecological and political issues and decreasing conservation program funding have led to a more challenging environment for conservation work. Watershed level partnerships and coalitions offer opportunities for diverse organizations and agencies to unite for conservation initiatives.

The Flathead Watershed Sourcebook is an excellent example of the power of collaboration. A product of the Flathead Community of Resource Educators (CORE), this book and companion website address the need to increase awareness and appreciation of natural, historical and cultural resources of the Flathead and to communicate watershed level interconnectedness to students. This watershed crosses international boundaries, encompasses a Biosphere Reserve, …

Mitigating Montana Moonscapes Around Anaconda, Pedro Marques

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

Smelting activities in Anaconda resulted in a persistent aerial plume of contaminants that settled on the landscape, with devastating impacts on upland vegetation. Extensive logging activities to fuel the first smelters, in combination with aerial emissions, have left some upland areas near the continental divide south of Anaconda void of vegetation (including weeds) for nearly 100 years. Gully erosion of impressive scale has transformed the uplands from zones of sediment retention and stability to a network of sediment delivery superhighways. For the last 5 years, the Mt. Haggin Technical Working Group has been studying these impacts and testing remedy and …

Montana Groundwater Academy, Beth A. Covitt, Jessie Herbert, Deb Fassnacht, Becca Paquette

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

spectrUM Discovery Area at the University of Montana, the Watershed Education Network, and many additional local partners are currently collaborating to implement a new field-based groundwater education program in western Montana. This presentation will provide an introduction to the Montana Groundwater Academy (MGA), which is a 2-year EPA-funded program that will engage high school students in place-based, data-driven science investigations. Students will develop knowledge of western MT hydrologic systems and the ability to undertake water research investigations. About 750 students will participate in a 3-day learning unit that will include a 1/2-day field trip to a groundwater education field site …

Restoring Migratory Native Trout In The Upper Clark Fork River, Casey Hackathorn, William H. Mcdowell

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

The upper Clark Fork River is the focus of a multi-decade Superfund effort to remediate and restore the watershed from the impacts of historic mining activities near its headwaters. One of the primary goals of the restoration effort is to improve fish populations in the mainstem Clark Fork. Current salmonid population estimates in the Upper Clark Fork average only about 20 percent of the populations in reference rivers in western Montana, and are dominated by non-native trout species. While remediation and restoration of the mainstem river will improve the water quality and habitat of the Clark Fork, additional work to …

Scale And Permanence: Monitoring Removal Of Milltown Dam, 1998-2014, David Schmetterling, Rob Clark, Tracy Elam

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

The removal of Milltown Dam commenced in 2006, after a century of impacts to the watershed. The last vestiges of the dam were extracted from the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers in 2009. The dam that once annually blocked the migrations of 10’s of thousands of fish, limited downstream fish movements, created a reservoir that fostered illegally introduced northern pike and was a source of heavy metal inputs to the river below is gone and over 2 million cubic yards of sediments removed. The removal of the dam reversed many of its effects immediately. Connectivity was restored …

The Clark Fork River Basin Information Ecosystem, Barry Brown

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

This survey of the Clark Fork River Basin (CFRB) information ecosystem will address the following questions: What are the best resources to use for systematically finding, and managing, comprehensive environmental information about the CFRB? What are the types, and scope, of information sources available about the CFRB? To what extent is there open access to this literature? How can researchers obtain access to information sources that are not freely available online? What techniques can researchers use to stay aware of new information?

Mitigation And Aquifer Recharge Opportunities In The Clark Fork Basin, Ian Auguste Magruder

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

Water for new uses -- including development, population growth, and fishery restoration-- is in short supply in the Clark Fork Basin. Basin Closure and over-allocation (when surface water flows are less than existing water rights on a source) require that new and changed water uses develop plans to re-allocate water to eliminate depletions of surface water. Mitigation and aquifer recharge are the two primary mechanisms used to offset surface water depletions and provide a mechanism for new water uses to be permitted. But mitigation and aquifer recharge are far from simple to accomplish.

This project evaluates mitigation opportunities for three …

Conserving Natural Water Storage To Mitigate Climate Change In The Clark Fork Basin, Bruce Simms

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

There is widespread scientific consensus that climate change will affect Montana’s hydrology by increasing spring and fall rainfall, reducing snowpack and increasing summer evapotranspiration. The expected results include earlier and more intense spring runoff (flooding) and reduced baseflow in summer (lower low flows). Natural water storage features on the landscape tend to smooth out the extremes of the hydrograph, by storing spring rains and gradually releasing the water later in the dry season. Natural water storage features can be managed to mitigate the expected effects of climate change. Options include riparian and wetland protection, increasing beaver populations, implementation of the …

Science Of The Cskt Water Rights Compact, Seth Makepeace

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

Starting in 1982, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes embarked on a deliberative process to collect hydrologic data and technical information concerning Reservation water resources. Through this effort the Tribes have developed a thirty+ year dataset, often on small and generally overlooked water resources, and have developed an in-depth understanding of surface and ground-water resources and their interaction. This information has broad application for ongoing water resources management. Also, for several decades the Tribes have recognized that their reserved, but unquantified, water rights would need to be perfected either in a negotiated or adjudicatory setting. Recognizing the complexity of water …

2015 State Of The River - 30 Years Of Conservation Progress, Vicki J. Watson

Clark Fork Symposium Archives

Evaluating the State of the Clark Fork River and its Basin requires that we periodically:

1. Assess its condition & compare that to our goals for the basin;
2. Determine whether the basin’s condition is getting better or worse;
3. Evaluate our plans & on-the-ground actions for effectiveness; and
4. Consider challenges that face us in meeting our goals.

Condition and Trends

The basin’s condition in 2014 is compared to its condition since 2000 based on biennial assessments made by MT Department of Environmental Quality and summarized in the Clean Water Act Information Center database. From 2000 to 2004, the percent of assessed streams …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Rural Health Literacy, Lorraine C. Adams

University of Montana Conference on Undergraduate Research (UMCUR)

Health literacy (i.e., the ability to seek, use, and understand health related information) plays a paramount role in receiving quality health care. Lower health literacy levels have also been associated with worse overall health outcomes (Paasche-Orlow, 2007; Jordan, 2009). Interestingly, rural populations tend to have lower health literacy levels compared to their urban counterparts (Zahnd, 2009). Therefore the purpose of this study was to examine potential contributing factors to rural populate’s lower health literacy levels. Ten structured, qualitative interviews were conducted on rural residents from Powell, Sanders, Beaverhead, and Flathead counties who had been discharged from St. Patrick’s Hospital Missoula, …

Effectiveness And Parent Acceptability Of 'Youth Engagement Through Intervention' Social Skills Group For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Zachary Shindorf, Anisa Goforth, Jennifer K. Schoffer Closson, Erin Yosai, Phillip A. Thomas, Miki J. Anderson

Speech, Language, Hearing, and Occupational Sciences Faculty Publications

This poster was presented at the Annual National Association of School Psychologists Conference in Orlando, Florida.