Surface water erosion is the primary cause of landslides. When intense periods of rainfall or snowmelt saturate the landscape, it softens the soils mixed within various sizes of rocks and boulders below ground level. The water flow also finds its way into air pockets underground. As the ground becomes more unstable, gravity nudges the heavy … Read more
Discharge… such an impersonal and flatly technical term for something so dynamic. It’s really just a description of how much water flows in a channel. Flow expressed in CFS or cubic feet per second over a period of time can teach you a lot about a river, from how it swells during spring runoff to … Read more
Precipitation in the form of snowfall plays the dominant role in year-to-year streamflow variability in the Uncompahgre River Watershed, but air temperature also has a significant impact. In the spring, the air temperature rises, snowmelt begins, and streamflow increases. This generally begins when nighttime temperatures stay at or above freezing (see blue line in the … Read more
