Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Protecting Alaska's Cook Inlet watershed and the life it sustains since 1995.
Sign up for email updates
Sections
You are here: Home › Healthy Habitat › Lower Kenai Peninsula › Discharge & Turbidity

Discharge & Turbidity

Discharge and turbidity baseline data collected by Cook Inletkeeper should be valuable in determining what the natural conditions are for these streams; however, these may be the parameters that change most rapidly as land-use activities increase and that may have the greatest affect on lower Kenai Peninsula communities and economies.

Alaska’s standard for turbidity is difficult to use as it requires an understanding of natural conditions which is generally lacking in the State.  The baseline data collected by Cook Inletkeeper should be valuable in determining what the natural conditions are for these streams; however, these may be the parameters that change most rapidly as land-use activities increase and that may have the greatest affect on lower Kenai Peninsula communities and economies.  Monitoring turbidity in these rivers and educating citizens about activities that contribute to muddy waters is critical.

Inletkeeper Strategies

Measuring DischargeTo describe background levels of turbidity across the hydrologic gradient, stage gauges (In-Situ Level TROLL 500 level sensors) have been established on Deep Creek and Ninilchik River.  A discharge - stage relationship will be created by collecting discharge data when streams are wadeable at each gauge station to create a continuous discharge dataset for these rivers.  Weekly turbidity samples are being collected and compared with the discharge dataset to develop a relationship between turbidity and stream discharge; only with this complete discharge dataset can turbidity exceedances be determined.

Future Work

Discharge GaugeThe relationship between water quality and water quantity is likely to change in the coming years as global climate change alters Kenai Peninsula watersheds by affecting flooding frequencies, stream temperature, precipitation levels, surface and ground water volumes, soil nutrient dynamics, and other hydrologic characteristics.  In addition, climate change may impact geographic distribution of wetlands.  The forest recovery from the Spruce Bark Beetle infestation on the lower Kenai Peninsula may also result in significant changes in hydrologic patterns. Stage gauges will continue to be an important long-term tool to understand how in-stream flows are changing and how turbidity is changing in relation to discharge patterns.

Additional Resources

For more information about the In-Situ Level TROLL 500 level sensors, see:

http://www.in-situ.com/In-Situ/Products/LevelTROLL/LevelTROLL500.html