Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program Administrative History
This administrative history of the Grand Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (GCDAMP) includes government reports, oral history interviews and other relevant information about Colorado River law, environmental protection law, hydropower regulation, the Glen Canyon Environmental Studies that served as a precursor to GCDAMP, and the activities of the Adaptive Management Work Group, the Technical Work Group, and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.
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- Creators: Fairley, Helen C.
- Creators: Gloss, Steven P.
ABSTRACT: This book is a response to the USGS’s call for a research design that could be used as a framework for prioritizing cultural resources in the Colorado River ecosystem below Glen Canyon Dam. Changing River includes summaries of current environmental conditions and previous research and brings together diverse archaeological opinions about Grand Canyon’s human story. It then presents a theoretical basis for using a landscape approach to organize future research efforts in the canyon. The research presented here explores the geophysical, paleoclimatic, and biological parameters that have shaped the canyon landscape and influenced choices made by humans as they attempted to adapt to this ecosystem. It then focuses on the distribution of cultural materials and patterns using several archaeological approaches, and investigates natural and cultural realms as mutually reinforcing and interacting components of an integrated ecosystem to which humans have applied meaning and value over time.
A regional research design for the study of cultural resources along the Colorado River in lower Grand Canyon and Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona.
This report is an important milestone in the effort by the Secretary of the Interior to implement the Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992 (GCPA; title XVIII, secs. 1801-1809, of Public Law 102-575), the most recent authorizing legislation for Federal efforts to protect resources downstream from Glen Canyon Dam. The chapters that follow are intended to provide decision makers and the American public with relevant scientific information about the status and recent trends of the natural, cultural, and recreational resources of those portions of Grand Canyon National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area affected by Glen Canyon Dam operations. Glen Canyon Dam is one of the last major dams that was built on the Colorado River and is located just south of the Arizona-Utah border in the lower reaches of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, approximately 15 mi (24 km) upriver from Grand Canyon National Park (fig. 1). The information presented here is a product of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (GCDAMP), a federally authorized initiative to ensure that the primary mandate of the GCPA is met through advances in information and resource management. The U.S. Geological Survey`s (USGS) Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center (GCMRC) has responsibility for the scientific monitoring and research efforts for the program, including the preparation of reports such as this one.