The seasonal variation of wind speed fluctuations is studied at four locations in The Dalles area of the Columbia River Gorge. Three of the sites are located in or near the valley floor while the fourth site is on top of a 900 m (3000 ft) ridge just north of The Dalles. The speed fluctuations or gustiness at these sites varies with terrain roughness, wind speed, and atmospheric stability. Due to the channelling effects of the Gorge, wind flow in The Dalles area is predominantly upriver or downriver. Strongest winds occur from the west at all four of the sites that were analyzed. Highest gustiness values occurred at the Martin Marietta site located near the rugged foothills of the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountain Range. Moderate gustiness values were common at KCIV located on the top of the ridge north of The Dalles and at the D.C. Test Site surrounded by rolling hills. Smoothest flow was found along the relatively level valley floor at The Dalles Dam. Gustiness in relation to wind speed varied at all four sites. Gustiness values increased with speed through the moderate speed range at KCIV while gustiness decreased with speed at The Dalles Dam and the Martin Marietta site. No distinct relationship was found at the D.C. Test Site. At KCIV changes in gustiness are directly related to the amount of solar insolation and hence the atmospheric stability. Gustiness values were highest during the summer and daytime values were greater than those at night during both winter and summer. In contrast, at the other three sites near or on the valley floor no distinct relationship between the stability variations and the changes in gustiness could be found. Results indicated that the gustiness values during the winter at these three locations exceeded those during the summer. It appears that the unstable nature of the post frontal wintertime air mass is responsible for the strong and turbulent northwest flow. Although moderate speed fluctuations were common at KCIV, this site is the most appealing of the four locations for wind power generation due to the persistency of moderately strong winds during both summer and winter. Least attractive of the four sites is Martin Marietta where high gustiness values along with weak winter winds provide little usable wind energy. / Graduation date: 1977

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2006. / Printout. Includes folded map. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-110). Also available via the World Wide Web.

The purpose of this study was to produce a detailed geologic map of the CRBG in the western portion of the Columbia River Gorge (fig. 1). The objectives were (1) to identify and delineate the extent of the Priest Rapids Member and Pomona Member intracanyon flows, and (2) to define the relationship of post-CRBG units to the CRBG intracanyon flows.

Between October 9, 1991 and October 16, 1991 a fire burned 577 hectares in the Columbia River Gorge near the west end on the Oregon side. All of the area burned consisted of second growth Pseudotsuga menziesii and the accompanying understory. This was the first disturbance of this magnitude in this part of the Columbia River Gorge since 1902. The purpose of this study was to examine the pattern of understory recovery in the first two years following the fire. This study also sought to learn: 1) how Pseudotsuga menziesii seedlings are recruited into the population, 2) how quickly the litter layer is a reforming, and 3) how quickly snags and downed logs are recruited into the understory. Four 800 square meter circular plots were established within the burned area of the Columbia River Gorge. Two plots were designated sun plots since the fire had killed the overstory. The other two were designated shade sites since the canopy over them was still intact. Twenty five randomly placed sample units (20 x 50 centimeters) were placed in each main plot. The plots were then sampled at approximately onemonth intervals from May through September of 1992 and 1993. The frequency and percentage of cover was recorded for all plant species that occurred in each sample unit. The data from 1992 and 1993 were compared by date of visit and type of plot, either (sun or shade) using the Pearson Goodness-of-Fit Test to examine and compare differences in the extent of cover and distribution of understory species. No significant differences were found. An increase in species richness and relative abundance of understory species was noted between pre-fire data collected by the US Forest Service and what I found. However, statistical analysis was not possible because of the limited data collection in the pre-fire sample.

The Early Miocene Eagle Creek Formation, a series of volcanic mudflows and debris flows, is exposed in the Columbia River Gorge about 64 kilometers east of Portland, Oregon. Eighty-seven samples were analyzed using instrumental neutron activation analysis for trace element concentrations. Eleven samples were analyzed by Dr. Peter Hooper at Washington State University using X-ray Fluorescence for major element chemistry. These data were used to determine that the Eagle Creek Formation compositionally ranges from andesite to dacite.

The Columbia Gorge Wine Region (CGWR) is an emerging wine producing area that extends for about 100km along the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington State in which the number of vineyards, wineries and physical terroir conditions have yet to be defined. To better understand the physical factors affecting Oregon and Washington wine, this project analyzes climate, topography, geology and soil at vineyards in the CGWR. This was accomplished using Geographic Information Systems, existing earth science databases and field work. The region, which includes the Columbia Gorge American Viticulture Area (AVA) and the southwest portion of the Columbia Valley AVA, is home to 82 vineyards, 513 hectares (1268 acres), 37 wineries and 41 different varieties of Vitus Vinifera. Vineyards range in elevation from 29 to 548 meters (95 to 1799 feet). Vintner responses to a grower's survey suggest that twenty-eight grape varieties account for 98% of the estimated grape variety acreage, with Pinot Noir being the most widely planted grape variety in both AVAs. The boundaries of each climatic regime were mapped based on 1981-2010 PRISM data, the Winkler Index (Amerine and Winkler, 1944) updated by Jones et al. (2010) and climatic maturity groupings designed for Oregon (Jones et al., 2002; Jones et al., 2010). Three Winkler climate regimes are represented within the CGWR, including regions Ia, Ib, and II from the Winkler Index (Jones et al., 2010). The diversity in regimes allows for a diversity of grape varieties to be planted within the regime. The average growing season temperatures and growing degree days, respectively, from 1981-2010 calculated for vineyards ranges from 13.7°C (55.7°F) to 17.7°C (63.9°F) and 871 for °C (1567 for °F) to 1664 for °C (2994 for °F) respectively. 58% of the vineyards are characterized in an intermediate climatic regime, 29% are within a cool climatic regime, 9% are within a warm climatic regime and 4% are on the boundaries between a cool, intermediate or warm regime. 80% of the vineyards are within Regions Ia and Ib characterized by the Winkler Index, and 20% are within Region II. The growing degrees days calculated for the CGWR are similar those measured in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, Burgundy, France, Umpqua Valley AVA in Oregon and Bordeaux wine region in France. All of the soils currently being used to grow grapes are well-drained and within a xeric moisture regime, which are favorable conditions for viticulture. 30 soil series are represented among the vineyard sites, with the Chemawa Series (Underwood Mountain) and Walla Walla Series (eastern portions) being the dominant soil series used to grow grapes. Majority of the soils contain a silt loam texture. Soil Survey data for Oregon and Washington suggest that loess is extensive in the CGWR, with 46.5% of the total vineyard acreage planted on soils formed in loess. The Missoula Floods also greatly influenced the texture and age of the soil in this region, with skeletal textures being close to the Columbia River. Other common geological deposits at vineyards in the CGWR include, Quaternary Basalt (19.6%), Missoula Flood deposits (9.1%), The Dalles Formation (8.0%), Columbia River Basalt Group (7.5%), Pliocene Basalt (3.0%), Quaternary Surficial deposits (3.0%), lahars (2.3%) and Quaternary Basaltic Andesite and Andesite (0.9%). Common geological deposits, soil series, and climate conditions at vineyard sites vary spatially in the region, and therefore it is suggested that future work focus on separating the region into separate climatic sub-AVA regimes to better reflect the diversity in terroir conditions.

Archaeological sites in the New World are the fragile and non-renewable remains of cultures which flourished for thousands of years prior to European contact and displacement. Sites which escape the effects of erosion and development often fall victim to vandalism. Cultural resources, including rock art and other archaeological sites, are protected by state and federal laws which prohibit the removal or disturbance of the sites, whether from development or from vandalism. Vandalism is frequently seen as a problem for law enforcement rather than a problem for cultural resource management. Management plans which include cultural resource protection provisions and guidelines often focus on threats to cultural resources from development, and omit planning which targets vandalism. The rock art sites of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area ("Scenic Area") have been affected by developments such as The Dalles Dam and by the vandalism. In this study, the nature and degree of vandalism to the rock art sites in the Scenic Area is considered in the context of public awareness of, and access to, these sites. Rock art sites which are easily located and which have been the focus of public awareness are hypothesized to be the most severely vandalized. To test this hypothesis, fifteen of the 44 rock art sites in the Scenic Area were selected for study, and were assessed for kind and degree of vandalism, and means and ease of access. The results of analysis yielded two statistically significant associations of variables which support the hypothesis: an association between vandalism and public awareness of sites, and an association between vandalism and the primary means of access. The analysis suggests that public awareness is one of the most important issues which land managers must address when designing cultural resource protection plans.

The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area (NSA) was created in 1986 in response to a growing interest in preserving the scenic beauty of the gorge. The creation of the NSA and other areas around the country with a scenic resource emphasis indicates a growing interest in protecting landscapes with diverse scenic qualities that are not showcase areas such as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. NSA mandates included the protection and enhancement of scenic, natural, cultural, and recreational resources (SNCRs) as the primary concern in the consideration of new land uses. The NSA management plan contains a complex mix of management tools for the protection of SNCRs in the gorge. This research was an investigation into how scenic resources policy was developed, with a focus on the scenic resources of the NSA. One issue was the definition of scenic resources, which are undefined in the management plan. Because of the difficulty of identifying scenic resources, other resources may be managed as a surrogate for them. An analysis was made of the scenic resources management schemes of several federal reserve lands with a stated scenic management objective to determine if this was the case, and to compare their management strategies for the NSA. A second issue was the public's understanding of what constitutes a scenic resource and the role that public input had in the development of the management plan. Empirical work suggests that complexity of issues may hinder successful public input processes. A final issue was how identifiable stakeholders in the Columbia River Gorge differed in their views on scenic resources, which may depend on their proximity to and relationship with such resources. Results of data analysis and the interview process reveal that public understanding about scenic resource concepts is low, and that gorge planners were primarily responsible for development of scenic resources policy in the NSA management plan. As expected there were some identifiable differences in the views on scenic resources among various stakeholders. Scenic resources management elsewhere is done primarily through traditional zoning requirements, and the basis of management of scenic resources appears to be for other culturally-defined purposes such as recreation.

Located in the Columbia River Gorge, The Red Bluff Landslide (18.8 km2) is one of four large landslides that make up the Cascade Landslide Complex. In its current form, the Red Bluff Landslide is a post-Missoula Flood feature made up of two components: an active upper lobe (8.6 km2) that is translational, creeping to the south at 25 cm/yr and spreading laterally to the east at 6 cm/yr over a semi-fixed portion (10.2 km2) of the Red Bluff Landslide area that has been "smoothed" by Missoula Floods. The upper active lobe is the landslide debris accumulated since Missoula Flood time (~15,000 yr. BP). Five separate collapse events have been identified and rock failures along the main scarp headwalls continue. Two rock avalanches on the Red Bluff Landslide were mapped. The Old Greenleaf Basin Rock Avalanche is estimated to have occurred 100 to 150 years ago, represents the fifth collapse event on the Red Bluff Landslide, and covers an area of 200,000 m2. It has a volume of 4.2 million m3; its length is 748 m and has a width of 215 m. On January 3, 2008, the Greenleaf Basin Rock Avalanche occurred, flowing over the Old Greenleaf Basin Rock Avalanche, covering an area of 100,000 m2 and deposited a volume of about 375,000 m3. Its length is 730 m with an average depth of 1.22 m. It contributed approximately 0.058% of the total volume and 0.01% of the surface area to the active upper lobe portion of the Red Bluff Landslide. The Greenleaf Basin Rock Avalanche was determined to be insignificant in the movement of the active part of the Red Bluff Landslide during the winter of 2007-2008. The original Cascade Landslide Complex map (Wise, 1961) included the Mosley Lakes Landslide which has now been removed because it lacked the characteristics of a landslide like a scarp. The original complex (35.5 km2) has been renamed the "Greater Cascade Landslide Complex" (43.0 km2), with the addition of the adjacent Stevenson Slide and the elimination of the Mosley Lakes Landslide.

Anthropogenic reactive nitrogen is emitted into the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion (nitrogen oxides) and agricultural activities (nitrogen oxides and ammonia). Nitrogen oxide emissions have long been controlled for their role in ambient air pollution and human health effects. However, reactive nitrogen deposition is less understood even though it can play a significant role in altering biodiversity, impairing ecosystem and biogeochemical function and degrading cultural artifacts. Although nitrogen deposition is a natural part of biogeochemical cycling, many ecosystems across the United States are at risk of exceeding the critical nitrogen deposition load. While nitrogen oxides are routinely measured in urban areas, far less is known in non-urban landscapes where ecosystems may be especially sensitive. Regional chemical transport models have been used to predict the impacts of ambient reactive nitrogen deposition in non-urban areas, but models have difficulty simulating reactive nitrogen due to poorly quantified emissions, especially from the agricultural sector. My research explores the speciated deposition of reactive nitrogen through monitoring and modeling in the unique field setting of the 150 mile Columbia River Gorge (CRG) located along the border of Oregon and Washington. This site is ideally suited for this investigation due to the large sources of reactive nitrogen at either end of the CRG and unique seasonally driven channel wind flow. Seasonally driven wind allowed us to look at the reactive nitrogen emissions flowing through the CRG to assess ambient the reactive nitrogen partitioning and deposition gradient. Using data collected by the United States Forest Service to control ambient haze in the CRG and our co-located nitrogen oxides (NOx) gas analyzer, we first characterized the influence of seasonal, bimodal wind distributions on the spatial distribution of reactive nitrogen. We found that during winter months with predominantly easterly winds, particulate nitrate and ammonium and gas-phase nitrogen dioxide levels create a gradient from the eastern end to the western end. Particulate nitrate and sulfate mass concentrations influence the CRG gradient during summer months with predominantly western winds. We also found that the magnitude of the impact from east is greater than the magnitude of impact from the west. When we compared our observations to regional chemistry transport models, we found that models are significantly under-predicting levels of reactive nitrogen in the CRG. This bias is not isolated to a single station within the Gorge, but throughout the whole Columbia Basin. Our results indicate that there are under-represented emissions in the region leading to this bias. Partly due to the bias in reactive N gas-phase species in the CRG, regional models have been underestimating the impact of gas-phase reactive N on dry N deposition. We conducted field studies at two sites within the CRG monitoring reactive nitrogen species (nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, ammonia, nitric acid, particulate nitrate, particulate ammonium, and particulate sulfate) as well as ozone and meteorological parameters. These measurements allowed us to conduct the first comprehensive analysis of reactive nitrogen partitioning and deposition in the CRG. Through our measurements, we found reactive nitrogen was higher in the spring than the summer. We found concentrations ranging from 0-15 ppbv ammonia, 0-7 ppbv nitric acid, 0-2 µg/m3 ammonium nitrate and 0-1 µg/m3 ammonium sulfate at the sites. Through the measurements of all these species, we evaluated the limiting gas-phase precursor to inorganic nitrogen particle formation. In the springtime, ammonia limits the formation of particulate reactive nitrogen; while in the summer, nitric acid and oxidized sulfur limit the formation of inorganic nitrogen particles. This suggests that there may be more sources of ammonia in the spring with fertilizer application or perhaps reactive nitrogen reservoirs are renoxified through thermal dissociation during warmer summer months. Our estimated deposition from gas and particle phase reactive nitrogen ranged from 0-0.14 kg N/ha per day. We also found that gas-phase reactive nitrogen plays the largest role in dry N deposition in the CRG with particle-phase contributing less than 15% of total dry N deposition. These results are important for land managers to understand the total impact of reactive nitrogen to non-urban areas. This research can inform mitigation strategies for haze formation, identify the major species and sources involved in dry N deposition and assess the potential impacts to ecosystems and cultural artifacts.