Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) and Sediment Discharge in a Small, Timber Production Watershed, Humboldt County, California

Sediment impacts to streams and rivers, either as suspended sediment concentration (SSC), or as aggradation, are well documented in the Pacific Northwest. Fishery stocks, estuarine, infrastructural and wildland resources can be negatively impacted. The causes and reasons for sedimentation of river resources are varied and diverse: tectonic setting - the relative rapid uplift of the study region produces a dominant erosional process of landsliding and mass wasting; regolithic setting - the relatively recent uplift of marine sediments has produced local formations of poorly and moderately consolidated soils, and lithic melanges that are naturally susceptible to erosion; climatic/geographic setting - coastal locations are subject to seasonal delivery of a relatively high average annual precipitation serving to transport available sediment; and finally, management setting - the activities that serve to make sediment available for transport to the river channel, forest road building and harvesting activities associated with timber production, agriculture, gravel mining, and fire management. The reduction of sediment loading can be accomplished through restoration activities like forest road decommissioning or riparian area revegetation. The need to prioritize restoration efforts is confounded by a lack of hydrographic and sediment discharge data, the complex terrain, and the inability to predict the effects of these activities on a dynamic scale. The Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) has been developed to model watersheds using spatially explicit geographical data coupled with physically based hydrologic equations. DHSVM simulates watershed processes across a grid on a cell-by-cell manner. The most recent development within the DHSVM includes a mass wasting / sediment production and channel routing module which allows prediction of total sediment loading in a forest basin. We are applying DHSVM to the McReady sub-basin of Freshwater Creek, Humboldt County, California, utilizing site specific precipitation, hydrographic, and sediment data. Hydrographic and sediment discharge data from 2002 to present are used to train and validate the model. A detailed sediment source inventory from both the road and stream courses further informs the model process and parameterization of sediment production and mobilization within the watershed. The availability of continuous discharge and sediment loading via turbidity threshold stations (TTS) allows validation of the model's performance on multiple levels: average annual, monthly, or weekly sediment loading, and on an event by event basis. Effective validation permits the use of the model to understand the effects of future management strategies, i.e. timber harvest, road construction or decommissioning on a site-specific basis, and to model landscape effects of wildfire and climate change scenarios on watershed functions.