First Project-Logan River Watershed

The Logan River and Blacksmith fork Watersheds are in Northern Utah of the Western United States

Google Map of the Logan River Watershed that one can explore

Morphometrics

Stream Order Method Comparison

Provided Data

Derived Data

The Beaver river is a 2nd order stream at its mouth, Temple fork is 3rd order at it's mouth, and the Logan river is 4th order at its mouth doing a manual Strahlers stream method using the perenial watercourse polyline data Provided by the Riverscapes Consortium

According to a DEM derived stream network and derived Strahlers stream network (taking DEM data, flow direction and flow accumulation derivation and then applying stream order analysis to it) using ArcGIS Pro, Beaver river is 5th order, temple Fork is Fourth order and the Logan river is a 6th order.

Both show that the drainage network is mostly dendritic

The river network does seem to approximately follow Hortonian laws of stream network composition based on looking at it and finding the frequency of sequences in each order (figure on the right) shows that it's approximately following the laws of stream network composition.

Longitudinal Profile

Elevation Profile for the Logan river starting in Franklin Basin down to Cutler Reservoir (the base level at 1344m) Generated using Caltopo line tool on their Hydro snap setting.

The mainstem length is 85 km

(K) the knickpoint is likely due to the dams within Logan Canyon. It is confined for most of the watershed through topography, geologic structure, and human construction. It empties into a reservoir which is another control on it's behavior.

Morphometric Controls

Concavity Equation

H= 2465-1344=1121

a=.5*1121-(f(x=85/2)-1344)

= 560.5-(f(42.5)-1344) 2*a/h=2*344.5/1121=.6 Catchment Perimeter= 172 km

=560.5-(1560-1344)

=344.5

Catchment Length Relief Ratio

646km^.6*1.4=68km I'll be honest, There's this derived value and then (3041m-1344m aka catchment relief in meters)/68,000m=.025

there is 95 km based on the definition "distance measured along the main channel with 95km = .018

from the watershed outlet to the basin divide" done manually, so I'll give both calcs when

appropriate(Eldho, T. I., "Lecture 12 Watershed Characteristics", module 4, Department

of Civil Engineering IIT Bombay)

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Circularity Ratio Elongation Ratio

646km/2354km=.27 646km*km^.5/68km=.37 with 95 km = .27

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Form Factor Drainage Density (using derived drainages)

646/68^2=.14 With 95 km = .07 867,598/ (area= 646,000)=1.34m/m^2

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Historical Base Level

18000 years ago the Paleoelevation for the Logan river base level was around 1550 m because of Lake Bonneville, 200m above where it is today.

(Chen, C.Y. and Maloof, A.C., 2017. Revisiting the deformed high shoreline of Lake Bonneville. Quaternary Science Reviews 159, p. 169-189. )

Data Credits

Data and software utilized was by ESRI, USGS, Utah AGRC, the Riverscapes Consortium, Google, BaseR, and Caltopo

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