ML163444
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Subject 1: (Interview). Subtitle: Gordon Grant, Elizabeth Arnold. Timecode In: 00:01:45. Timecode out: 00:08:30. Notes: Hydrology discussion. Subject 2: (Sound Effects). Subtitle: Falling water. Timecode In: 00:10:09. Timecode out: 00:14:04. Subject 3: (Interview). Subtitle: Gordon Grant, Elizabeth Arnold. Timecode In: 00:14:19. Timecode out: 00:42:02. Notes: Hydrology discussion. Subject 4: (Sound Effects). Subtitle: Falling water. Timecode In: 00:44:18. Timecode out: 00:48:53. Subject 5: (Interview). Subtitle: Elizabeth Arnold. Timecode In: 00:49:08. Timecode out: 00:50:48. Notes: Promo stand-ups. Equipment Notes: Decoded MS stereo; Sonosax SXM 2 preamp. NPR/NGS RADIO EXPEDITIONS Show: USFS 100th anniversary Engineer: Leo DelAguila Date: June 11-13, 2005 DAT #5 Gordon Grant, Research hydrologist with the USFS Pac NW research station in Corvalis Oregon Elizabeth Arnold Leo delAguila 0:03 Leo- Dat # 5, June 13, I'm with Elizabeth, and where are we? 0:08 GG- We are at roaring springs, on the upper south fork of the Mackenzie River. 1:35 EA- What's going on here? There's water and it's coming out of the hillside but it's? What is going on here? 1:51 GG- it's a pretty wild place. This is roaring spring and it's just an amazing place. We just climbed down about a 100 foot cliff and we're still about half way down to the main river valley but we see a wall of water in front of us that must be probably about a football field in length, you can't even see the end of it from here, it just gets lost in the trees. And the water seems to be coming outo f a line, like you could almost trace it with a pencil and it's just cascading down hundreds of feet over moss covered branches and woody debris and rock. Above it there is nothing. We hiked in. Did you see any trace of a river? (No) No clue that this is coming out, and yet, you're looking right here, right now, at 1% of the Willamut river's flow into Portland Harbor in the summer time. Comes out of this one place in the mountains and so the role that springs like this play in sustaining rivers downstream all the way down to and through the biggest urban center in Oregon, is tremendous. The water is, has a constant temperature, and I mean winter, summer, year in year out, of just about 38 or 39 degrees. We know from isotopes that the water is five years old, it's taken about five years to come out here. We have no clue as to what areas are contributing water to this point. It's all underground. It's obviously a very well organized river system that's underground and the reason we thinkt he spring is here is that this valley that we're in is glaciated and the most likely story to explain the spring is that there was some sort of big regional underground river and the glacier came along and rasped it's way, cut it's way down along the side of this hill, and essentially liberates it. But from a map you would never know that this much water was flowing underground here. In other words, in general ecology when we want to understand how big a river is we measure it's drainage area, how much area is draining to that point. The drainage area of this river is Zero, it is zero because the water is not coming from the surface, it's all coming sub surface. It's a mystery and it's even more a mystery because we don't even have the smoking gun lava's, no where in the vicinity of this watershed can we find those young volcanic flows of the kind we've been looking at. And we know from the potassium argon dating of the rock here, that the water is flowing in lava flows that are approximately 400,000 years old. So this spring is much older, the water conduit is much much older than anything we've ever seen. 6:00 EA- this is an amazing place, sort of like one of those natural wonders. 6:10 GG- It really is. It's a , you know, 6:18 EA- what did you think when... (Notes truncated)
Technical information
- Recorder
- SONY TCD-D8
- Microphone
- Sennheiser MKH 30; Sennheiser MKH 40
- Accessories
Archival information
- Cataloged
- 24 Aug 2010 - David McCartt
- Digitized
- 24 Aug 2010 - David McCartt
- Edited
- 24 Aug 2010 - David McCartt