Why watersheds are important (for Hakai) to study - most global/general sense. i.e., why we care
Watersheds link land and sea but there is a great deal we don’t know about how those linkages work
Why Calvert watersheds are important to study
Very unique “hypermaritime rainforest”, with lots of precipitation and wetlands, not at all like the towering trees that many imagine when they hear “rainforest”
Watershed like this cover large areas of the BC and AK coast yet Calvert island is the only location in BC with long term study of land-sea linkages
Why broader central coast watersheds are important to study
The marine watershed around our field station are affected by local runoff from Calvert Island but also by runoff from the larger more mountainous watersheds of the adjacent mainland, including the glacierized watersheds of Rivers Inlet and Burke Channel.
Given this, our watershed science involves both intensive observations of the Kwakshua Watersheds as well as regional scale modelling that integrates data from the diverse watersheds of the central coast.
Concise mission statement; what we do.
A hotspot for carbon connections
A paragraph about our most interesting findings re carbon connections between land and sea. And the reasons for this.
Say:
Why carbon matters. Why we care about DOC
We discovered that:
This place is a global hotspot of DOC export
The organic carbon stimulates the microbial foodweb in the ocean and impacts the ocean carbon cycle in ways that are still being investigated
There is also a lot of organic nitrogen, which might become available…
But the inorganic nutrients needed by phytoplankton are so dilute in these streams that the freshwater from Calvert Island actually dilutes the concentrations of these nutrients in the marine waters of Kwakshua Channel
Show:
Images of DOC rich water entering the ocean.
Images of bogs
Maybe a soil core photo
Maybe the drone video flying up from Kwakshua toward headwaters…looking upstream into the watershed to understand why we get some much DOC export
Maybe our graphical model
Maybe Kyra’s graphical model
An innovative way to monitor streamflow
A paragraph about how we measure streamflow and why it’s important
Say:
Start with the technical problem we had to solve: big rain events come and go very fast and during the most challenging times of the year (fall and winter storms) yet measuring flow during those short term large runoff events is critical to accurately measuring streamflow over time. This is very hard to do - hard to get suitably trained technicians out to these remote places at those specific times.
Solution: automation. Built a system that takes measurements when no people are around allowing us to rapidly collect a lot of measurements of representatively high flows, including those that are too nasty or dangerous for people to effectively measure directly.
Mention that it helps fill a really big gap in the regional observation network
We’ve reached a big milestone of 10 years, contributions to X number of papers, and provision of realtime data access to all hydrologists and the general public.
Show:
A time lapse video of stream flooding
Photos of people doing the work in the field
These rain-fed streams are unique and dynamic
A paragraph about Kwakshua watersheds as ecosystems and how they create really dynamic connections between land and sea. Driven by seasonal dynamics - drier vs wetter seasons - and by the sequential march of rainstorms that come off the ocean from fall through winter. Mention the role of atmospheric rivers.
Mountainous watersheds in the distance play a big role in land-sea linkages over the larger Central Coast
Some text and images representing the really contrasting watersheds of Rivers Inlet and Burke Channel
Maybe mention discharge modelling that feeds into oceanography papers
The rain-fed watersheds of Calvert Island are not the only sources of water and carbon to the coastal ocean around our field station…. Describe the others. Then describe how they all combine to:
Produce the high terrestrial signature observed in particulate organic matter samples collected in the ocean waters between Calvert Island and Rivers Inlet.
Produce the high total freshwater inputs that we see in Justin’s paper etc.
Yet each major type of watershed also plays a distinct role in shaping the quantity, quality, and timing of freshwater export to the ocean. Give specific examples:
Rain -
Snow type -
Glacier type - late summer runoff, especially big role in fjords
Broaden out to our regional work
May or may not need this.
Idea to show how the Calvert observatory plays a big role in not just local but also regional scale understanding of watershed exports to the coastal ocean from Southeast Alaska to Northern California.
Show graphic with watershed types?
Show regional map?
