Reclamation Information Sharing Environment (RISE)

The Wild and Scenic Rio Chama experiences fine sediment inflows that smother the gravel streambed and negatively impact brown trout habitat. Using hydrophones, incipient motion can be detected, and that data correlated to a range of flow rates. These flow rates can be used by water managers in planning environmental flows that remove fine sediments from the coarse, gravel bed of the Chama. This project was a collaboration between Bureau of Reclamation and USGS. This catalog record contains the final report and the hydrophone audio recordings from high flow events. The MATLAB code used to process data is available from USGS: Marineau, M.D., Ely, C.P., 2025, Matlab code to count acoustic impulses from coarse sediment particle collisions during sediment transport in rivers, U.S. Geological Survey Software Release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P13GQRSF.