A Water Budget and Solute Flux Budget for Waimea River Watershed, Kauai, HI, U.S.A
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Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Theses and Dissertations 2020-12-21 A Water Budget and Solute Flux Budget for Waimea River Watershed, Kauai, HI, U.S.A. Joseph Harold Tolworthy Brigham Young University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Tolworthy, Joseph Harold, "A Water Budget and Solute Flux Budget for Waimea River Watershed, Kauai, HI, U.S.A." (2020). Theses and Dissertations. 8779. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/8779 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. A Water Budget and Solute Flux Budget for Waimea River Watershed, Kauai, HI, U.S.A. Joseph Harold Tolworthy A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Stephen Tracy Nelson, Chair Barry R. Bickmore Gregory Carling Department of Geological Sciences Brigham Young University Copyright ©2020 Joseph Harold Tolworthy All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT A Water Budget and Solute Flux Budget for Waimea River Watershed, Kauai, HI, U.S.A. Joseph Harold Tolworthy Department of Geological Sciences, BYU Master of Science Waimea Canyon is a deep V-shaped canyon on the island of Kauai, Hawaii in which the Waimea River and its tributaries flow. The shape and size of the canyon are noteworthy and unusual compared to its contemporary canyons on the Hawaiian Islands which are usually U-shaped or flat bottomed. This could be because there is significantly more physical erosion in Waimea Canyon compared to others. A water budget was created using ArcGIS Pro and data from the University of Hawaii’s rainfall and evapotranspiration atlases, as well as from the United States Geological Survey’s stream gage data. A mass flux was estimated using ArcGIS pro by creating a paleosurface from the ridge points and then finding the mass difference between todays watershed and the watershed with the paleosurface. Weathering reactions were made to model the processes in the watershed. The reactants were found from using oxide percentages of Kauai basalts and inputting them into MELTs to estimate mineralogy. The products were found by analysis of soil and water samples in the area of the Canyon. In the Waimea River watershed approximately 159 t/km2/yr is removed, of which 56% is by physical erosion. This was compared to the V-shaped Makaweli river watershed where approximately 12% is removed by physical erosion and in the U-shaped Hanalei watershed ≈ 68% is removed. While these differences could be explained by vegetation cover, precipitation, and slope steepness it shows that there is not more physical erosion in Waimea Canyon compared to the others. Thus, the origin of the V-shape of Waimea Canyon remains unexplained. Keywords: erosion rates, weathering reactions, water budgets, Waimea Canyon, Hawaii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Funding for this study came from the department of Mathematical and Physical sciences at BYU. I would like to thank my advisor Dr Steve Nelson for all his help and support. I would also like to thank my other committee members, Dr Greg Carling and Dr Barry Bickmore for all their help. Kevin Rey also deserves thanks for his help in the field and lab but especially for the expedition down Waimea Canyon. I would like to thank my fellow grad students for their help and support throughout the last 2 years, the Andersons for helping me come to BYU in the first place, and Virgil and Audrey Peterson for their scholarship that allowed me to concentrate on my studies. Most of all I want to thank my friends and family for all their support, help, and patience throughout the whole experience, especially my wonderful wife, Sara. TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE .............................................................................................................................................. i ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................ iv LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF APPENDICES ................................................................................................................ vii 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Description of Study Area .................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Geology & Hydrogeology..................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Water Budget ........................................................................................................................ 3 2. METHODS ................................................................................................................................. 4 2.1 Water Budget ........................................................................................................................ 4 2.2 Mass Flux .............................................................................................................................. 5 2.3 Weathering Reactions ........................................................................................................... 7 2.4 Solute flux ............................................................................................................................. 8 3. RESULTS ................................................................................................................................... 9 3.1 Water Budget ........................................................................................................................ 9 3.2 Mass and Solute Flux. ........................................................................................................... 9 4. DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................................... 11 4.1 Water budgets ..................................................................................................................... 11 4.2 Weathering Reactions ......................................................................................................... 12 4.3 Mass flux and comparisons ................................................................................................. 14 5. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 16 6. REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................... 18 FIGURES ...................................................................................................................................... 22 TABLES ....................................................................................................................................... 29 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. ........................................................................................................................................ 22 Figure 2. ........................................................................................................................................ 23 Figure 3. ........................................................................................................................................ 24 Figure 4. ........................................................................................................................................ 25 Figure 5. ........................................................................................................................................ 25 Figure 6. ........................................................................................................................................ 26 Figure 7. ........................................................................................................................................ 27 Figure 8. ........................................................................................................................................ 28 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Water Chemistry for sites along the Waimea river and its tributaries. ............................ 29 Table 2: Water budget results ....................................................................................................... 30 Table 3: Solute flux results. .......................................................................................................... 30 Table 4: Soil mineralogy ............................................................................................................... 31 vi LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix A: FDC results per year for the three rivers