A paired watershed study was conducted from May 2002 through June 2003 to
ascertain the roles of glacier processes on watershed sediment discharge. Lemon
Creek, an actively glaciated watershed, and Gold Creek, unglaciated, were used in this
study. Some specific event-based effects of the glacier were identified but in general
not as pronounced as anticipated, perhaps due to the unseasonably warm winter during
the study period and probably also due to landslide activity in both watersheds that
added unexpected variability to the data. Overall the glaciated system produced an
order of magnitude more sediment over the course of the year than the unglaciated
watershed. This study concludes that in systems substantially influenced by glacier and
mass wasting processes, the traditional TSS-Q (total suspended sediment-stream
discharge) relationship is not particularly meaningful because some of the most
pronounced sediment events are associated with processes that are not well correlated
with stream discharge. At the time of this report, analysis of the collected data is
continuing in order to identify additional insights into the erosion processes in Lemon
and Gold Creeks.
