Remote Sensing Survey of the Walla Walla River Basin

 Thermal Infrared and Color Videography

Summary of the Draft Report

April 5, 2001

The anticipated information from the Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) Flight of the Walla Walla River (Summer, 2000) has been preliminarily characterized in the this Draft Report.  The funding for this project came from the Washington Department of Ecology, Walla Walla Basin Watershed Council, and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.   Below you can download a version of the copy as a pdf (Acrobat) file. We would greatly appreciate your comments on this draft report.  Please submit your comments, concerns or suggestions to Bob Bower.

"What is a FLIR?"
Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) has been demonstrated as a reliable, cost-effective, and accessible technology for monitoring and evaluating stream temperatures from the scale of watersheds to individual habitats (Karalus et al., 1996; Norton et al., Faux et al., 1998). In 2000, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) contracted with Watershed Sciences, LLC to map and assess stream temperatures in portions of the Walla Walla River Basin.

Traditional methods for monitoring stream temperatures have relied on in-stream temperature monitors. These monitors provide temporally continuous data, but furnish no insight into the spatial variability in temperatures. With the use of remote sensing, we have been able to map stream temperatures across entire stream networks for the time that is sampled. FLIR technology has proven to be a highly portable and cost-effective method to collect very detailed data over large areas in very little time. The combination of temporally and spatially continuous data provides very powerful tools for understanding the dynamics of stream temperature hierarchically across multiple scales (pools à reaches à streams à watersheds). Current research has identified cool versus warm streams within a watershed, cool reaches within a stream, and cool habitats within a reach (McIntosh et al., 1995; Torgerson et al., 1995; Torgerson et al., 1999).

The results and analysis presented here are at the watershed and tributary scales. This report provides longitudinal temperature profiles for each stream surveyed as well as a discussion of the thermal features observed in the Basin. FLIR and associated color video images are included in the report in order to illustrate significant thermal features. An ArcView GIS database provided with this report includes all of the images collected during the survey and is structured to allow analysis at finer scales.

Click here to see images from the FLIR flight

Click here to see a map of the area covered

Click here for a list of attributes of the project

Right click here to save a pdf copy of the FULL TECHNICAL REPORT (2.2 MB)

Right click here to save a pdf copy of the APPENDIX TO THE REPORT (1.7 MB)
 (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read these files)
 

Please note that the full report was revised on 4/26/02 to correct an error in the reporting of the temperatures.

Please contact Bob Bower (541) 938-2170 if you have any questions regarding the report.