THESIS APPROVAL The abstract and thesis of Janice Anne Dougall for the Master of Science in Geography were presented August 14, 2007, and accepted by the thesis committee and the department. COMMITTEE APPROVALS: ____________________________________ Andrew G. Fountain, Chair ____________________________________ Heejun Chang ____________________________________ Martin L. Lafrenz ____________________________________ Donald M. Truxillo Representative of the Office of Graduate Studies DEPARTMENT APPROVAL: ____________________________________ Martha A. Works, Chair Department of Geography ABSTRACT An abstract of the thesis of Janice Anne Dougall for the Master of Science in Geography presented August 14, 2007. Title: Downstream Effects of Glaciers on Stream Water Quality I assess whether the rate of change of glacial water quality variables with distance from the glacier scales with fraction of glacier cover relative to watershed area. In particular, tests aim to determine whether the change in fractional glacier cover with distance normalized by the square root of glacier area, called L*, provides a useful model for water quality change with distance. Data were collected from four glacial streams on Mt. Hood and two on Mt. Rainier, and from three non-glacial streams. The data collected were temperature, turbidity, suspended sediment, electrical conductivity, and nutrients. Nutrients include total nitrogen, total phosphorus, ammonium, and soluble reactive phosphorus. In addition, major anions were measured in all streams and macroinvertebrates were sampled for two streams. Macroinvertebrates are the aquatic larval forms of some insects. Results indicate that change in some water quality characteristics, temperature and conductivity, follow the proposed model, while others, turbidity and suspended sediment concentration, do not. L* and fractional glacierization correlate better and explain more of the variation in temperature and conductivity than do distance and upstream basin area, other measures cited in the literature when describing sample locations. Distance and upstream basin area perform slightly better than L* and fraction glacierized for turbidity and suspended sediment concentration. These results indicate that temperature and ionic concentrations scale inversely with glacier size and L*, which must imply diminishing glacial stream habitat with continued glacier shrinkage that results from climate change. Loss of glacial stream habitat would result in loss of insects toward the bottom of the alpine food web. The macroinvertebrates inhabiting glacial streams are the aquatic larval forms of flying insects that become food sources for birds, other insects, and fish. There may be downstream consequences to fish in the form of reduced food supplies. Downstream populations of salmonids may also suffer from warming water, since ideal habitat temperatures are 14°C or less and the downstream extent of cold water will diminish as glaciers shrink. Decreased salmon populations will affect the fishing industry, native culture, and recreational fishing. DOWNSTREAM EFFECTS OF GLACIERS ON STREAM WATER QUALITY by JANICE ANNE DOUGALL A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in GEOGRAPHY Portland State University 2007 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I heartily thank my advisor, Andrew Fountain, for all the time he spent working with me, and for his patient and encouraging guidance. Committee members Heejun Chang and Martin Lafrenz helped me make plans, refine my ideas, improve analyses, and tighten the text. I would also like to thank them and Donald Truxillo for serving on my committee and providing insightful comments that helped improve this thesis. Although not on my committee, Keith Hadley also directed me to important papers and gave solid advice. I am eternally grateful to my many volunteer field assistants. First thanks go to Michele Newell who sampled with me on four rivers, and then to Jon Norred who sampled at two rivers and stuck with it when his drinking water filter broke and there was nothing but glacial water to drink. Many others assisted me with fieldwork, including Alex Levell, David Graves, Marius Dogar, Ben Bradley, April Fong, my husband Norm Goldstein, and our dog Azda. Jean Jacoby, Seattle University, and Joy Michaud also deserve special thanks for sampling macroinvertebrates with bare hands in ice water. Thanks to Jean for identifying them, too. Final thanks go to Ed Storto who taught me how to break into my car when I left the keys inside at a trailhead; I still have the wire to use when I get the chance to pass the lesson on. There are many people and organizations deserving my thanks for the use of equipment and facilities. Thanks for the loan of equipment to Briggy Thomas at the City of Portland Water Bureau, Stephen Hinkle of the U.S. Geological Survey, Barbara Samora of Mount Rainier National Park, and the Oregon Geographical Alliance at Portland State University. Thanks for the use of laboratory facilities are i owed to Ben Perkins of the Geology Department for the use of his ion chromatograph. Thanks to Yangdong Pan and Mark Sytsma of the Environmental Studies Department, for the use of their labs in nutrient analysis, with special thanks to Christine Weilhofer for carefully helping me to do the analyses. Thanks to Chris LeDoux, as well, for the use of her house during field work. Robert Schlicting was my salvation for remembering Andrew’s stash of Hobo data loggers and suggesting a method for encasing them. What a relief not to have had to generate all my own data. Keith Jackson and Thomas Nylen provided me with ArcMap shapefiles of glacier and permanent ice and glacier area data for Mount Hood and Mount Rainier, respectively. I owe Keith additional praise for passing this gauntlet ahead of me and providing his work as an example to follow. Thanks and cheers to Sarah Fortner, Ohio State University, for sending on chemistry data from snow pits on Eliot Glacier, and for letting me be dirty hands for snow sampling of trace metals. Support for this research has come from the following sources: the Rocky Family Scholarship, the Portland State Geography Department for providing full funding with a Teaching Assistantship with Geoffrey Duh, who was at times my best personal motivator. Field expenses were paid by Andrew Fountain. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………...i LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………...………………...vi LIST OF FIGURES ……………………………………………………………viii Chapter 1: Introduction………...………………………………………………..1 Chapter 2: Study Area……………………………………………………………6 2.1 Geology…………………………………………………………………...12 2.2 Glaciers and glaciation……………………………………………………15 2.3 Climate……………………………………………………………………15 Chapter 3: Previous Work………………………………………………………17 3.1 Physical water quality..................................................................................20 3.2 Nitrogen…………………………………………………………………...23 3.3 Glacial stream macroinvertebrates………………………………………..25 3.4 Climate change effects on glaciers and glacial rivers…………………..…25 Chapter 4: Methods ……………………………………………………………..27 4.1 Sampling locations………………………………………………………..27 4.2 Sampling methods………………………………………………………...29 4.3 Sampling chronology …………………………………………….……….30 4.4 Field and laboratory methods...…………………………………………...31 4.5 Macroinvertebrate sampling………………………………………………35 iii 4.6 Geographic Information System analysis………………...……………….35 4.7 Data analysis………………………………………………………………35 4.8 Assessment of Lagrangian method………………………………………..37 Chapter 5: Results and Analysis………………………………………………..40 5.1 Temperature……………………………………………………………….41 5.2 Turbidity ………………………………………………………………….51 5.3 Suspended sediment concentration………………………………………..59 5.4 Electrical conductivity…………………………………………………….66 5.5 Anion concentrations……………………………………………………...72 5.6 Macroinvertebrates……..…………………………………………………73 Chapter 6: Discussion……………………………………………………………75 Temperature……………………………………………………………….76 Electrical conductivity…………………………………………………….78 Anion concentrations……………………………………………………...80 Turbidity and suspended sediment………………………………………..80 Macroinvertebrates………………………………………………………..82 Climate change……………………………………………………………83 Chapter 7: Conclusions………………………………………………………….85 Suggestions for future research…………………………………………...87 References………………………………………………………………………..91 iv Appendix A: Assessment of Lagrangian sampling.……………………….…..99 Appendix B: Temperature……………………………………………………..100 Appendix C: Turbidity…………………………………………………………110 Appendix D: Suspended sediment concentration…………………………….117 Appendix E: Electrical conductivity…………………………………………..123 Appendix F: Anions………………………………………………….…………129 Appendix G: Nutrients…………………………………………………………130 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Glaciers and glacier areas draining to study rivers, listed by region…..….7 Table 2. Contributions to annual flow from glacier and non-glacial sources for three basins with different glacial cover (Verbunt et al., 2003)………….……….18 Table 3. Sampling locations and measures for each river, listed in order of decreasing contributing glacier area, given as a range. ..…………………...…….28 Table 4. Sampling dates, locations, duration listed by sampling method.………..30 Table 5. Number of hours Lagrangian sampling was conducted before or after estimated water travel times. …..…………………………………………………39 Table 6. Statistical summary of temperature data (°C) from data loggers.……….42 Table 7. Correlation coefficients from comparisons of location temperature averages to distance measures ……………………………………………………43 Table 8. Regression coefficients,