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Colorado River Campsite Monitoring, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, 1998–2012

Description

River rafting trips and hikers use sandbars along the Colorado River in Marble and Grand Canyons as campsites. The U.S. Geological Survey evaluated the effects of Glen Canyon Dam operations on campsite areas on sandbars along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park. Campsite area was measured annually from…

River rafting trips and hikers use sandbars along the Colorado River in Marble and Grand Canyons as campsites. The U.S. Geological Survey evaluated the effects of Glen Canyon Dam operations on campsite areas on sandbars along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park. Campsite area was measured annually from 1998 to 2012 at 37 study sites between Lees Ferry and Diamond Creek, Arizona. The primary purpose of this report is to present the methods and results of the project.

Campsite area surveys were conducted using total station survey methods to outline the perimeter of camping area at each study site. Campsite area is defined as any region of smooth substrate (most commonly sand) with no more than an 8 degree slope and little or no vegetation. We used this definition, but relaxed the slope criteria to include steeper areas near boat mooring locations where campers typically establish their kitchens.

The results show that campsite area decreased over the course of the study period, but at a rate that varied by elevation zone and by survey period. Time-series plots show that from 1998 to 2012, high stage-elevation (greater than the 25,000 ft3/s stage-elevation) campsite area decreased significantly, although there was no significant trend in low stage-elevation (15,000–20,000 ft3/s) campsite area. High stage-elevation campsite area increased after the 2004 and 2008 high flows, but decreased in the intervals between high flows. Although no overall trend was detected for low stage-elevation campsite areas, they did increase after high-volume dam releases equal to or greater than about 20,000 ft3/s. We conclude that dam operations have not met the management objectives of the Glen Canyon Adaptive Management program to increase the size of camping beaches in critical and non-critical reaches of the Colorado River between Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Mead.

ContributorsKaplinski, Matt (Author) / Hazel, Joe (Author) / Parnell, Rod (Author) / Hadley, Daniel R. (Author) / Grams, Paul (Author)

Created2014-07

Paul Grams Oral History

Description

Summary:

Interview conducted by: Dr. Paul Hirt, Arizona southwestern U.S. state. State University and Jennifer Sweeney, Four East Historical Research, LLC. Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program Administrative History Project. Administered by Arizona southwestern U.S. state. State University Supported by a grant from the US Bureau of Reclamation.

Biography:

Paul Grams has worked…

Summary:

Interview conducted by: Dr. Paul Hirt, Arizona southwestern U.S. state. State University and Jennifer Sweeney, Four East Historical Research, LLC. Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program Administrative History Project. Administered by Arizona southwestern U.S. state. State University Supported by a grant from the US Bureau of Reclamation.

Biography:

Paul Grams has worked directly with the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (GCDAMP) since 2008, as a program manager and research hydrologist at the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center (GCMRC). His involvement in Grand Canyon studies goes back to 1991, when he took a Colorado River research trip as part of an undergraduate science course. Grams is an expert on the effects of dams on river geomorphology and sediment transport. He holds a BA in Geology from Middlebury College, an MS in Geology from Utah State University, and a PhD in Geography and Environmental Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

ContributorsHirt, Paul (Interviewer) / Sweeney, Jennifer (Interviewer) / Grams, Paul (Interviewee)

Created2020-01-24

Footprints on the Sands of Time: Retracing Harvey Butchart's Exploration of the Grand Canyon through His Annotated Matthes-Evans Maps – Video Recording

Description

John Harvey Butchart was a mathematics professor at Northern Arizona University from 1945 to 1973. From 1945 to 1987, he spent considerable time in the Grand Canyon, hiking established trails, exploring obscure routes, and discovering new routes. In all, Dr. Butchart spent over 1,000 days in the Grand Canyon and…

John Harvey Butchart was a mathematics professor at Northern Arizona University from 1945 to 1973. From 1945 to 1987, he spent considerable time in the Grand Canyon, hiking established trails, exploring obscure routes, and discovering new routes. In all, Dr. Butchart spent over 1,000 days in the Grand Canyon and traveled over 12,000 miles in the Canyon. Dr. Butchart kept journals on his explorations and complemented those notes with a heavily annotated copy of the 1927 Francois Matthes and Richard Evans East Half, West Half topographic maps of the Grand Canyon. Embedded in Butchart’s annotated Matthes-Evans maps are compelling stories of adventure, discovery, triumph, and heartbreak. This presentation will highlight selections of those stories and the impact this map has had on subsequent hiking exploration in the Canyon.

ContributorsRunge, Peter (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)

Created2019-02-28

Creation of the Matthes-Evans Topographic Map of the Grand Canyon – Video Recording

Description

Creation of the Matthes-Evans United States Geological Survey topographic map of the Grand Canyon was a herculean effort. It was the most impressive mapping activity to ever take place at the Grand Canyon, considering the surveying tools that were available at the time. Field work on the Matthes-Evans map began…

Creation of the Matthes-Evans United States Geological Survey topographic map of the Grand Canyon was a herculean effort. It was the most impressive mapping activity to ever take place at the Grand Canyon, considering the surveying tools that were available at the time. Field work on the Matthes-Evans map began in 1902, but publication of the map did not occur until 1927. This was a 25 year effort, facing extremely challenging field conditions. This presentation will describe the surveying methods and tools used, and the field work required to prepare the Matthes-Evans Map. Extremely challenging terrain and climate made field work quite difficult. Matthes and others produced firsthand accounts that provide a historical record of the mapmaking effort and some of the trials and tribulations encountered by the surveyors. These sources, plus the author’s onsite visits to triangulation stations and benchmarks provide the basis for the story of the map’s creation.

ContributorsUpchurch, Jonathan (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)

Created2019-02-28

Legislating the Boundaries: Redrawing the Map in 1925 – Video Recording

Description

It is a truism that maps cannot exist without boundaries, whether those boundaries are the borders of the map itself or the geographic coordinates circumscribing the limits of the physical space being mapped. Grand Canyon National Park, like all national parks, has written and legislated descriptions that form the basis for…

It is a truism that maps cannot exist without boundaries, whether those boundaries are the borders of the map itself or the geographic coordinates circumscribing the limits of the physical space being mapped. Grand Canyon National Park, like all national parks, has written and legislated descriptions that form the basis for mapping the evolving nature of the park. The year 1925 saw the first significant re-writing of the legal boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park since its legislative creation in 1919. This presentation will discuss the “sausage-making” involved in re-writing the borders of Grand Canyon National Park.

ContributorsOetting, Ed (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)

Created2019-02-28

Mapping Grand Canyon National Park – Video Recording

Description

Four recently published maps of Grand Canyon National Park that owe their design inspiration to renowned mapmakers of the twentieth century, a relationship that I will explore. The first map, the “South Rim Pocket Map,” targets the majority of visitors who go only to the South Rim and stay there…

Four recently published maps of Grand Canyon National Park that owe their design inspiration to renowned mapmakers of the twentieth century, a relationship that I will explore. The first map, the “South Rim Pocket Map,” targets the majority of visitors who go only to the South Rim and stay there for four hours or less. I based this map on the 1972 “New York Subway Map” by Massimo Vignelli, which distorts geography in order to squeeze information into tight geographic areas. Out of necessity I did likewise for the “South Rim Pocket Map,” which had a print run of three million copies last year. My next map, “Hiking Below the Rims,” draws inspiration from Brad Washburn’s “Heart of the Grand Canyon” published in 1978 by National Geographic. I used a digital technique called texture shading to mimic the Swiss-produced rock hachuring found on Washburn’s map. Up next in my talk is a map of the entire canyon made for the official park brochure. It features natural colors similar to those developed in the 1950s by USGS cartographer, Hal Shelton. I will wrap things up with a panorama of the Grand Canyon that borrows a clever idea from late Austrian panoramist, Heinrich Berann. I warped a digital elevation model on a convex arc to create a hybrid 3D scene featuring a conventional map in the foreground and a panorama in the background. You can decide if it works.

ContributorsPatterson, Tom (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)

Created2019-02-28

Mapping Grand Canyon (Conference Introduction) – Video Recording

Description

Prior to the 1850s, no large-scale maps of the Grand Canyon existed. Maps covering the region were predominantly small-scale products, crudely generalizing vast swathes of territory. Most maps relegated the location of the Grand Canyon itself to a conspicuous “blank space”. In the mid-19th century era of US territorial expansion,…

Prior to the 1850s, no large-scale maps of the Grand Canyon existed. Maps covering the region were predominantly small-scale products, crudely generalizing vast swathes of territory. Most maps relegated the location of the Grand Canyon itself to a conspicuous “blank space”. In the mid-19th century era of US territorial expansion, fueled by the ideological imperatives of Manifest Destiny, such glaring omissions of cartographic detail demanded a corrective filling-in. A map drawn by the pioneering cartographer Frederick Wilhelm von Egloffstein as part of the 1857-1858 Ives survey marked the first successful effort to map the Colorado River, and, by extension, its Grand Canyon, in any meaningful detail. A decade later, in the summer of 1869, a one-armed Civil War veteran named John Wesley Powell famously led a group of nine men to explore and conduct a more thorough topographic survey of the still mysterious lands abutting the river. In the decades following the Ives and Powell surveys, the motivations for mapping the Grand Canyon have changed, as have the technologies, the techniques, and the very maps themselves. From maps of increasing topographic accuracy, to fancifully illustrated pictorial maps, to National Park Service maps, to geologic maps, to interactive 3D web maps, and everything in between, the geography of the Grand Canyon region has been the subject of a multitude of diverse manifestations of cartographic representation.

ContributorsToro, Matthew (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)

Created2019-02-28

Conference Program

DescriptionOfficial program of the Mapping Grand Canyon Conference. Document was designed and optimized for digital dissemination and mobile device (smartphone, tablet) viewing and interactive browsing. Document was deliberately not printed in paper format with the intent of minimizing the event's ecological footprint through a reduction of paper and ink waste.

ContributorsWatson, Amy Carolyn (Compiler, Designer) / Toro, Matthew (Compiler, Cartographer) / Avila, Theresa (Contributor) / Field, Kenneth (Contributor) / Fry, Michael (Contributor) / Griffin, Dori (Contributor) / Kaplinski, Matt (Contributor) / Karlstrom, Karl (Contributor) / Manone, Mark (Contributor) / Oetting, Ed (Contributor) / Patterson, Tom (Contributor) / Quartaroli, Richard David (Contributor) / Runge, Peter (Contributor) / Semken, Steve (Contributor) / Smilovsky, Nikolas (Contributor) / Smith, Stephanie (Contributor) / Spindler, Rob (Contributor) / Trapido-Lurie, Barbara (Contributor) / Upchurch, Jonathan (Contributor) / Deitrick, Stephanie (Contributor) / Lemar, Shea (Contributor) / Messinger, Ellen Murray (Contributor) / Sherwood, Jill (Contributor) / Wilhelm, Karina (Contributor)

Created2019-02

How Washburn Mapped the "Heart of the Grand Canyon" – Video Recording

Description

When renowned cartographer and mountaineer Brad Washburn visited the Grand Canyon in 1969, he discovered that existing maps of the area were "inadequate" for either popular or scholarly use. Never one to be deterred, Washburn set about making one. This is the story of his 7-year-long effort, done in close…

When renowned cartographer and mountaineer Brad Washburn visited the Grand Canyon in 1969, he discovered that existing maps of the area were "inadequate" for either popular or scholarly use. Never one to be deterred, Washburn set about making one. This is the story of his 7-year-long effort, done in close collaboration with the National Geographic Society, Switzerland's Federal Office of Topography, and scores of supporting characters, to satisfy his desire to produce the best map of the canyon -- more precise, more detailed, more beautiful -- than anything that had come before.

ContributorsFry, Michael (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)

Created2019-02-28

Mapping Grand Canyon for Conservation – Video Recording

Description

In 1985, Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt and several others officially registered the Grand Canyon Trust as a non-profit organization dedicated to defending the natural integrity of the Grand Canyon. But the Trust realized early on that issues don’t stop at the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park. So in 1987,…

In 1985, Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt and several others officially registered the Grand Canyon Trust as a non-profit organization dedicated to defending the natural integrity of the Grand Canyon. But the Trust realized early on that issues don’t stop at the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park. So in 1987, we expanded the scope of our work to encompass the entire Colorado Plateau, of which the Grand Canyon stands as the centerpiece. GIS at the Trust helps tell the historic and current conservation story through advanced cartography, interactive web mapping, and spatial analysis. Using art and science, we design maps that illustrate physical characteristics, cultural values, proposals and conservation actions, and vulnerabilities across the Colorado Plateau. Our work reaches a broad audience including policy-makers, constituencies, government agencies, and our supporters. This presentation will highlight some of our most recent work in and around Grand Canyon, challenges we face as geographers, and how our maps have been used to further protect the Grand Canyon.

ContributorsSmith, Stephanie (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)

Created2019-03-01

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