Colleague Patrick Griffiths, Water Resources Coordinator for the City of Bend (OR) sent me this article writen by Kate Ramsayer of the Bend Bulletin.
Her piece describes the work of Dr. Gordon Grant, a colleague who works for the U.S. Forest Service and is a courtesy professor at Oregon State University. Grant has long been intrigued with the "peculiar river", the Deschutes River of central Oregon, which rises in the High Casacades and flows north to the Columbia Rver.
The basin map is courtesy of the Deschutes River Conservancy (DRC).
Unlike the rivers flowing west off the Cascades, the Deschutes and some others flowing east off the Cascades are fed predominantly by ground water, not surface runoff.
Because of that, due primarily to the high permeability of the relatively young volcanic rocks comprising the High Cascades, the Deschutes is generally less prone to the vagaries of drought and climate change than its surface water-fed counterparts. Grant feels that fact may mean that the Deschutes' flow will better weather warmer climate.
Interesting, but controversial, as the Deschutes is fully appropriated (see the article). Read the entire article here:
Download river_for_warmer_times_bulletinclimatechange2007.pdf
Here is a longer, more technical article about Grant's work from the USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW):
"Remember - life is just an eddy in the Second Law of Thermodynamics." -- Anonymous
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