| Abstract/Description or Keywords |
The Cotton Creek Experimental Watershed (CCEW) project is helping researchers understand the effects of large-scale forest disturbance on watershed function. Understanding the effects of these disturbances, such as the mountain pine beetle (MPB) infestation and subsequent salvage harvesting, on watershed function is critical to ensuring water resources are managed sustainably and to protect downstream resource values. Assessing the effects of these episodic disturbances is often difficult because we cannot predict where and when they will occur. So, when existing research installations are threatened with MPB infestation, it creates an excellent opportunity to examine preand post-disturbance trends in watershed function. The Cotton Creek Experimental Watershed, a long-term experiment into the effects of forest management and forest disturbance on watershed function, presents just such an opportunity. This watershed has been extensively instrumented and monitored for four years, generating a set of highquality baseline data which includes climate, streamflow, groundwater, soil moisture, channel morphology, water quality, and riparian processes. Initiated in 2004, the Cotton Creek Experimental Watershed project is a collaborative effort between the University of British Columbia (UBC), Tembec, and the BC Ministry of Forests and Range (MOFR), with funding through the Forest Investment Account–Forest Science Program. The third major watershed experiment in the Southern Interior, this site complements ongoing research at Upper Penticton and Redfish Creeks in terms of climate and topographic differences. It is a 17.4 km2_watershed situated 17 km south of the city of Cranbrook which drains into Moyie Lake to the west. Cotton Creek watershed is one of several types of watersheds that are characteristic of the Southern Interior. Covering a wide range in elevation, it is underlain by sedimentary bedrock, and is completely forested up to the ridges as opposed to being alpine- or grassland-dominated. Over 50% of the watershed is covered with lodgepole pine, making the CCEW a high risk watershed for MPB infestation; indeed, patches of red trees were visible in the fall of 2006. Outbreaks of MPB in the watershed in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in salvage logging. |
