RMNP to host ‘water blitz’

Posted by egable on August 7th, 2008 filed in Water, National parks

With the help of more than 70 volunteers, researchers with the National Park Service and the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences will collect hundreds of stream samples from both sides of the Continental Divide on Tuesday.

The goal is to provide researchers with a “snapshot-in-time” of water quality from approximately 250 locations within and around Rocky Mountain National Park in order to glimpse how spatial differences in climate, pollution and disturbances like mountain pine beetle are affecting Colorado’s watersheds. The researchers hope to collect water from as many watersheds as possible in and around the park on both sides of the Continental Divide in one 24-hour period.

Park officials said the so-called “water blitz” will help them to understand the controls on chemistry of headwater lakes and streams in the Colorado Rockies and predict the effects of environmental change on headwater ecosystems. In addition, the analysis of
macro-invertebrates is expected to help researchers understand how the aquatic food web varies spatially and temporally.

Nutrient changes in the park’s high-altitude streams can also affect water quality far downstream. The headwaters for the Colorado River, as well as the St. Vrain and Big Thompson, which supply drinking and irrigation water to northern Colorado communities, are all found in Rocky Mountain National Park.