This fall semester ended up being a very busy semester indeed. As a result, posts on our blog have been lacking – not because we haven’t had anything to blog about, there just haven’t been enough time. Anyway, here is a post about a field trip I went on in the beginning of October.
I took a course named Watershed Hydrology here at NC State. It was taught Ryan Emanuel. We took a field trip to a research station 7 hours away from campus called the Coweeta Hydrologic Lab.
Coweeta is a large watershed that drains into the Coweeta River.Despite being pretty much all Appalachian mountains, once it was clear cut for timber it was farmed for years causing lots of erosion. The US Forest Service, recognizing the need for scientific study of east coast forest systems, turned it into a research station.
Here is a blog post from Peeling Back the Bark that gives a pretty good history of Coweeta.
Coweeta Experimental Forest entrance sign with administrative building at right, 1942.
As for our field trip our discussions focused on many topics that had been, were, or would be discussed in our class, including: measuring water discharge using stream gaging stations, methods to measure evapotranspiration and other climatology data, the effects of changes in the plant community on the water budget, and much more.
Here are some pictures from the trip. The concrete structures are gaging stations used to measure stream water discharge. The scenic mountain views were taken from the lookout tower on Albert Mountain overlooking the research lab. Enjoy!
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