MARMOT CREEK BASIN: MANAGING FORESTS FOR WATER

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Prosper Cameron
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2 MARMOT CREEK BASIN: MANAGING FORESTS FOR WATER

3 CABIN AND TWIN CREEK EXPERIMENTS

4 MARMOT CREEK SUBBASINS Subbasin Drainage Treatment Area (ha) (completion date) Cabin Creek 212 (50%)* Commercial cut (1974) Middle Creek 285 None (control) Twin Creek 264 (50%) Honeycomb cut *Percentage below tree line (1979)

5 OBJECTIVE OF CABIN CREEK TREATMENT To determine if the guidelines of the Alberta Forest Service for commercial cutting in spruce-fir forests were satisfactory for maintaining the volume of high quality water that these watersheds yield (Swanson et al., 1986)

6 ALBERTA FOREST SERVICE GUIDELINES No debris from road construction and maintenance, and logging shall be allowed to enter any water courses Roads shall be located and constructed so as to cause a minimum of soil erosion and sediment deposition in streams, and no road shall restrict the natural flow of streams Abandoned skid roads and trails shall have adequate drainage to prevent erosion No green timber shall be cut within 100 feet of the high water mark of any water course Logging methods (i.e. skidding) shall be confined to the use of horses, rubber tired skidders or crawler tractors (Rothwell 1977)

7 THE COMMERCIAL CUTTING ON CABIN CREEK SUBBASIN (Rothwell, 1977)

8 (Rothwell 1977)

9 Snow water equivalent (mm) OBSERVED AND PREDICTED SWE ON CABIN SUBBASIN BELOW TREELINE AT MAXIMUM SNOW PACK, All cut blocks All adjacent areas (After Golding and Swanson 1986) Cabin basin uncut Observed Predicted Cabin basin below treeline

10 Monthly flow (dam3) PREDICTED VS OBSERVED STREAMFLOWS FOR CABIN CREEK DURING THE POSTTREATMENT PERIOD 200 Predicted if left uncut 160 Observed after logging Jan Feb March April May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. (After Swanson et al., 1986)

11 OBJECTIVE OF TWIN CREEK TREATMENT To prolong recession flow from snowmelt and/or delay the time to peak runoff (Research Coordinating Committee, Alberta Watershed Research Program, 1977)

12 Discharge (Litre/s/km 2 ) HYDROGRAPHS ILLUSTRATING OBJECTIVE OF THE TWIN CREEK TREATMENT Noname Creek (Control) Fox Creek (60% logged) 0 5-May 15-May 25-May 4-Jun 14-Jun 24-Jun 4-Jul 14-Jul 24-Jul 3-Aug 1974 (After Swanson and Hillman 1977)

13 Snow accumulation (cm w. e.) Mean maximum snow accumulation, , in forest openings at James River, near Caroline. (After Golding 1977) / /4 1/ Opening diameter (tree heights (H) )

14 Snow accumulation (cm w. e.) Mean snow accumulation at last measurement of the season, , James River, near Caroline (After Golding, 1977) / /4 1/ Opening diameter (tree heights (H))

15 DETAILS OF TWIN CREEK SUBBASIN TREATMENT Based on the James River results, treatment of Twin consisted of 2103 circular clearings of 15 m and 20 m diameter, or 3/4 to 1 1/2 times the height of the surrounding forest 40% (52.8 ha) of the forested area cleared Mechanical clearing over most of the subbasin Clearings centred on alternate intersections of a square grid 15 or 20 m apart Slash and non-merchantable trees were flattened Merchantable trees were removed in tree lengths with rubber-tired skidders. Horse logging was tried on a small portion of the subbasin (Golding and Swanson, 1986)

16 HONEYCOMB TREATMENT APPLIED TO TWIN CREEK SUBBASIN (Golding and Swanson, 1986)

17 SNOW ACCUMULATION ON TWIN SUBBASIN BELOW TREELINE AT MAXIMUM SNOWPACK, MARCH (410 MEASUREMENT POINTS) Snow water equivalent (mm) Subbasin Actual Subbasin predicted Clearings Intervening forest All years (After Golding and Swanson 1986)

18 EFFECTS OF TWIN TREATMENT ON STREAMFLOW Nakiska resort and ski runs were built between 1985 and 1987; some ski runs intruded on Twin Creek subbasin (also snow- making machines?) Streamflow was measured on Cabin, Middle and Twin Creeks up to the end of 1986 This suggests that there are five years of post-treatment streamflow data ( ) that can be used to evaluate the effects of the Twin treatment, or 4 years if we exclude the year following treatment I used all the data available for Middle Creek and Twin Creek to obtain some tentative results. I defined as the pretreatment period and as the posttreatment period

19 Twin - June streamflow (dam 3 ) CALIBRATION FOR PREDICTING TWIN CREEK JUNE STREAMFLOW slope = intercept = Middle Creek - June streamflow (dam 3 ) Water Survey of Canada data

20 Monthly flow (dam 3 ) PREDICTED VS OBSERVED STREAMFLOWS FOR TWIN CREEK DURING THE POST- TREATMENT PERIOD Predicted Observed Water Survey of Canada data Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec

GAMINGRE 8/1/ of 7

GAMINGRE 8/1/ of 7 FYE 09/30/92 JULY 92 0.00 254,550.00 0.00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 254,550.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 254,550.00 AUG 10,616,710.31 5,299.95 845,656.83 84,565.68 61,084.86 23,480.82 339,734.73 135,893.89 67,946.95