Site Four - North Salt Lake

Methods

I used Google Earth to help determine the boundaries of the river area, active floodplain, valley bottom margin, confinement and constriction. The elevation/terrain pictures came from Google Earth. I used data from the Riverscapes Warehouse, specifically the TauDEM, Channel Area, and Riverscapes Context to estimate the valley bottom and active floodplain. I have included a screenshot of the Height Above Nearest Drainage (Hand). I am also familiar with this area and I am using previous experiences to help determine all of the areas.

I used Google Earth Pro to create a polygon of the river length, river area, active floodplain, valley bottom margin, confinement, and constricted. In many cases I had to create multiple polygons to encompass the whole intended area and in this case I made sure to add them all up for the combined total. All the cells in blue are the raw calculations and everything else are calculated numbers. For the confined and constricted percentage I did an educated guess. For the rivers width I used an integrated width method. Which is calculated by the river length divided by the river area. I used the integrated measurement because the river's width changes throughout the whole reach and it would be more accurate than taking an average of multiple width measurements in different places.

This reach is located close to where it flows into the Great Salt Lake. This area has been heavily urbanized and modified for human use. In Figure 4.1 I added a picture from 1993 to show the dramatic changes after 25 years but we have been altering the Jordan River since the 1847's. The main channel of the Jordan River (the left stream) has been anthropologically set into place but the side stream has not and you can see how much it has changed and moved. This side stream is fed by the main Jordan River, groundwater and the water plant right next to it (bottom right of Figure 4.2). I put the Valley Bottom Channel and indefinitely because if we did not colonize and modify the Jordan then it would have a huge range to meander and flow from Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake.

For Floodplain Geomorphic Units there are paleochannel, chute cut-off, anabranch and maybe some backswamp in the lighter area which looks like fine-grain sediments. There is backwater pool near the top of the reach because the right stream is a side channel.