Weekend Stream Experience

Over the summer, I had the chance to experience many streams while helping Cory with his field work as a technician. This past weekend we ventured out to some Blue Ridge streams. To the right is pictured a New River endemic, the Kanawha Darter (Etheostoma kanawhae). They are identifiable by the 6 dark saddles located across their back. They prefer small cobble to gravel substrate and are found in riffles. Adults range in size from 50-65 mm standard length. This picture was taken in Big Wilson Creek while snorkeling on Sunday.

To the right is Lick Creek near Sandstone, West Virginia. This creek is a prime example of how variable flow rates can be in a stream. Earlier this summer in June, this creek had higher discharge rates that it currently does now. This is evident from the picture. This creek is also part of the New River drainage. It is comprised of mostly cobble and small boulders with low embeddedness during normal discharge and the stream is fairly high gradient. This creek is home to Variegate Darters (E. variatum), telescope shiners (Notropis telescopus), greenside darters (E. blennioides), and rainbow darters (E. caeruleum) jsut to name a few species.


The next picture is of Little River in North Carolina another stream that is home to Kanawha Darters. This is a prime example of a Blue Ridge Stream. It has small substrate, with high embeddedness, and has turbidity levels of 2-3 Ntu's. These Blue RIdge streams are also fairly low in gradient. Also, when snorkeling on Sunday the water temperature was around 18 degrees celcius. Downstream of this site, most of the banks had been deforested, with slump banks lining much of the stream.



The last picture I decided to include in my blog is a picture that I took of Sandstone Falls in Sandstone, WV. These falls are located on the New River just downstream of the Bluestone Dam in Hinton, WV. I just thought it would be a good picture to share with the rest of the class even though I do not know much about it. However, the best part of these falls is that on one of the signs near the viewing platform for the falls states that "the dam upstream actually helps the ecosystem". It doesn't say that directly, but that is what we decided they were trying to say and thought it was quite funny.