User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
07/09/2020
08:47
8 °C overcast
-transition season with summer ending and moving into fall, rainfall in the past 24hours
The site is located on Steamboat Mountain and is designated as rangeland, specifically the Bryanton Creek and Tea Kettle ranges. It is a mountain slope with primarily conifer forests. I chose three small perennial streams that flow through the area (Figure 1). Each of the sites shows recent use by cattle (Bos Taurus) with tracks and manure. The slope to access the creeks at the point of observation is varied for each location; site 1 location 4 is forested and has little slope (Figure 2), site 2 location 2 is steep, rocky and has small areas of pooling (Figure 3), site 3 location 3 is gently slopped with steeper sides (Figure 4). The streams are rocky and varying sizes of pooling with gravel to muddy linings. All three sites have similar vegetation with large spruce (Picea ?), birch (Betula papyrifera),and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca) forming the primary canopy. There is an abundance of red-oiser dogwood (Cornus stolonifera C. sericea), common horsetail (Equisetum arvense), and bunch berry (Cornus canadensis) as well as mosses and lichens at all three sites.
Questions that I had after observing these sites includes:
Is the health of the streams impacted by the cattle?
Is there concern with E. coli in the streams with the cattle defecating in the streams?
Does the access to the stream, as far as steepness, have an impact on how used the stream is by larger animals such as cattle and ungulates?
