Sediment Baseline Group

The purpose of the Sediment Baseline work group is to identify baseline conditions of Kansas streams and watersheds. The Kansas Water Office is interested in comparing watershed characteristics above two types of reservoirs: a “reference” reservoir that would appear to have a low sedimentation rate and one (or two) reservoir(s) in the same general physiographic setting that appear to have a much higher sedimentation rate. The ultimate goal would be to use policy and management (where applicable) to change the characteristics of the higher sedimentation rate reservoir to emulate those of the lower sedimentation rate reservoir (See Map, & Table of Estimated Drainage Areas).

Many work group partners have cooperated to develop scopes of work, strategies, and budgets to accomplish the necessary tasks to answer the sediment baseline research question. These draft work plans are linked below. As changes are made to the work plans, the most current edition will be included on this webpage. Your comments and feedback are needed to develop the most cost-effective and collaborative research strategy.

Presentation: Baseline Sediment Study Summary - Chris Gnau, Kansas Water Office

Spring 2009 videos of the three study watersheds now available.

For ArcGIS users: Download the zip file (unzip it) and follow the directions in the Word file to modify the project for the hyperlinks to the videos of the streams systems above Atchison, Banner and Centralia Lakes.

For non-ArcGIS users: Download the zip file (unzip it) and navigate to the folder titled "Stream_Video_LowRes1".  Use the .jpg files to identify the video of interest in each watershed.  The videos are .wmv files, double-click them to play.

KUCEAE_Helicopter_Video.zip

If you have any trouble with the install or viewing, call Chris Gnau (785) 296-0617.

Sediment Baseline Assessment Work Plan