Last fall, I was occupied with coursework rather than research. But, since completing all the classes I need for my MSc last December, I dove head-first into research and data processing. I am giving two presentations on my results so far this March: one at Geoconvention in Calgary, and one at SAGEEP in Denver. For anyone curious about my story, this post is an annotated version of my Geoconvention presentation that will let you follow along.
This is a work in progress, so your comments, questions, critiques, and suggestions are all welcome and encouraged.
- Mountain sources account for 2/3 of all surface water flow in the Calgary area. Groundwater storage helps regulate that flow, but our understanding of these groundwater processes is based on only one case study.
- We use geophysics (resistivity and seismic methods) to investigate the subsurface at a new site in the Kananaskis Valley.
- We see some processes that we recognize from earlier studies: there is a thin layer of water flowing on top of bedrock, and there are large buried depressions that store water and slowly release it to surface streams.
- We observe processes that were previously undocumented in Canadian Rocky Mountain headwaters: buried channels, and perched water tables in talus slopes.
- This field site contrasts with our previous case study. These results will help us with forecasting water availability by hinting at which groundwater processes are ubiquitous and which ones appear in only some locations.
