Details > Dolores Study
A. Acknowledgements
The Dolores Study, or Upper Dolores River Basin Study, was conducted, in part, with funding from the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) to Dryland Consulting LLC. Also assisting through coordination and participation by management and field personnel and through equipment shared was the San Juan National Forest (SJNF) office of the U. S. Forest Service (USFS). Additional support in obtaining and installing temperature sensors was provided by the Dolores River Anglers (DRA) chapter of Trout Unlimited (TU). Funding support also came from Colorado Trout Unlimited (CTU). Water quality analyses were funded by the PEW Trust and coordinated through Mountain Studies Institute (MSI) of Durango, CO. It was an honor and pleasure to work with these organizations and with the highly motivated individuals who assisted in the study.
B. Investigator
Mountain streams were part of this study investigator's experience growing up. These were in the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. In research on the Cumberland Plateau, he examined changes in stream water and groundwater quality as a result of coal mining as part of studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he finished his Ph.D. in environmental engineering. He has an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a master's degree in water resources development, and has since spent several decades in environmental engineering consulting. He resides in Mancos, CO, just south of the upper Dolores River basin study area.
C. Context
There is a point of view, unsurprisingly. It follows from the investigator's particular education and experience. It is expressed in approaches taken and methods applied. It appears in the presentation of results, that is, in comparisons made and interpretations offered. It is inherent in suggestions by the investigator about how the study's findings are considered for priorities and actions to take.
Water temperature and quality are the primary subjects of this study and are two aspects of trout habitat. Drought is a factor and is considered, too.
Outside this study scope, however, are other important matters, such as how food production in streams may alter. As well as forest cover. Along with adverse effects on habitat, water quality, and stream hydrology from wildfires. These figure from changing climate. And they're consequential.
Other points of view applying to what's sketched above appropriately come from the thoughts and experience of fish and aquatic biologists, forest scientists, and hydrologists. As well as that of managers with program development and execution responsibilities. And of property owners in the upper Dolores River basin.
These, and more, necessarily would be part the discussion and development of adequate, perhaps good, and maybe even excellent protection and preservation of trout habitat and, more broadly, basin aquatic health. Some urgency pertains in this effort as climate change and its consequences are faced.
Raymond R. Rose
Mancos, CO
