Changes in the amount of water and sediment that enter a river can change its shape and size. The way that rivers change is affected by a variety of factors, including the size of the sediment in the river, and past changes to the river. The Diamond Fork River in central Utah has been altered by water deliveredfromthe Colorado River system for over a century. Beginning in 1915, water used for irrigation was delivered through a tributary, Sixth Water Creek, with daily summer flows that were much larger than natural flows. This caused drastic change to the rivers, as they became wider and vegetation along the channel margin and floodplain was destroyed. Management changes in 1997 and 2004 reduced the amount of water and sediment added to the river. In this study, we sought to understand how Sixth Water and Diamond Fork changed in the past and what the implications are for the future. We used data from a variety of sources to describe how and why the river changed in the past. Our results indicate that parts of the river that are not confined by valley walls became very wide during the period of elevated flows and narrowed after the change in management in 1997. Confined reaches experienced minor changes over the period of record. Areas of the channel that were most dynamic in the past are the most susceptible to future change because they have finer sediment that is more easily erodible. Areas that did not experience past changes are unlikely to change in the future without direct intervention from humans or beaver. The findings of this study improve our understanding of Sixth Water and Diamond Fork, and confirm the importance of past changes and valley confinement.

This study examined historic change of riparian plant communities and fluvial geomorphic response of gravel-bedded streams and their floodplains to over 50 years of hydrologic disturbance. Four tributary basins of the Arkansas River were analyzed. Lake Creek, Clear Creek, and Cottonwood Creek are drainages similar in area, physiography, and vegetation composition. However, Lake Creek may receive an instantaneous discharge of approximately 28 m3sec-1 from the Twin Lakes tunnel, over three times the normal flow of the stream during spring runoff. By contrast, Clear Creek and Cottonwood Creek, nonaugmented streams, were used as controls to compare the historic and present condition of natural flowing streams with Lake Creek. Lake Fork was also examined, another augmented stream that carries transmountain water stored in a reservoir to the Upper Arkansas River. Hydrologic data collected from U.S.G.S. gaging stations were used in an attempt to identify relations between specific flow events and corresponding changes in fluvial landforms, riparian vegetation patterns, and channel morphology. Topographic cross sections of the channel and floodplain were surveyed and hydraulic geometry at each field site was examined. Aerial photographs from 1938-39, 1956-57 , and 1988 were incorporated into a Geographic Information System (GIS) to prepare a series of land cover maps of the river corridor at eight field sites on augmented and nonaugmented streams. Results indicate channel morphology and riparian vegetation cover on the active floodplains of Lake Creek and Lake Fork have experienced substantial change from natural physical and biologic conditions as a result of historic and present flow augmentation practices. The increase in water discharge without a natural sediment load in Lake Creek and Lake Fork appears to have caused accelerated rates of channel bank erosion, incision, and bank retreat below transbasin diversion releases. In some downstream reaches characterized by gentler slopes and wider valley bottoms, the width-depth ratio of the channel has increased and sinuosity has decreased. Sites carrying transmountain water were characterized by higher shear stress and specific stream power values and larger bed material compared to control sites. Consequently, the Lake Creek and Lake Fork drainages show temporal and spatial loss of riparian vegetation adjacent to the stream channel in response to historic and present flow augmentation practices. Control watersheds, Clear Creek and Cottonwood Creek, where natural flow regimes exist, did not experience similar magnitudes of change in channel morphology or spatial distribution of riparian vegetation.

From the Proceedings of the 1977 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 15-16, 1977, Las Vegas, Nevada / With the advent of ever -increasing energy needs, large-scale surface mining has gained new impetus, and there is much concern about reclaiming the mine spoils to bring about beneficial land uses. This paper presents a decision making algorithm labeled PROTRADE, and a case study of the Black Mesa region in Northern Arizona. PROTRADE considers a set of objective functions, a set of physical constraints, articulates the preferences of the decision maker in a progressive manner, and generates a set of alternative solutions. The decision maker is then able to trade level of achievement, for each objective function, against the probability of achieving that level.