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Using high-frequency sensors to assess water quality trends and suspended sediment surrogates above and below reservoirs in New Mexico and Southern Colorado, 2020-2025, Final Report
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| Created: | Aug 26, 2026 at 4:56 p.m. (UTC) | |
| Last updated: | Aug 26, 2026 at 5:50 p.m. (UTC) | |
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| Content types: | Single File Content |
| Sharing Status: | Public |
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Abstract
Dams fundamentally alter downstream water quality, sediment transport, and aquatic ecosystems, yet few long-term, high-frequency datasets exist for rivers of the southwestern United States. This project deployed multi-parameter sondes at eleven sites upstream and downstream of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoirs in New Mexico and southern Colorado (Abiquiu, Cochiti, Conchas, Jemez Canyon, John Martin, Santa Rosa, and Trinidad) to collect 15-minute measurements of temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, specific conductance, and turbidity from 2020 through water year 2025, complemented by discrete suspended-sediment sampling to develop site-specific turbidity-to-sediment relationships. All datasets are publicly available through HydroShare. Five years of data reveal high intra- and interannual variability in streamflow and water quality driven by variable snowpack, the North American Monsoon, and episodic disturbances such as the 2022 Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, which produced sediment loading that remains elevated four years post-fire. Weak concentration–discharge relationships (r² ≤ 0.26 at all sites) demonstrate that discharge alone cannot predict sediment loading. Mean annual inflow loads spanned roughly an eight-fold range (~24,700–196,800 metric tons per year), and the four reservoirs with paired monitoring sites retained 91–96% of incoming sediment over five years. These results provide empirically grounded, reservoir-specific estimates of sediment accumulation to inform reservoir capacity assessments and sedimentation mitigation, and underscore the value of continuous long-term monitoring in these highly variable semi-arid systems.
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Coverage
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Funding Agencies
This resource was created using funding from the following sources:
| Agency Name | Award Title | Award Number |
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| United States Army Corps of Engineers | Using high-frequency sensors to assess water quality trends and suspended sediment surrogates above and below reservoirs in New Mexico and Southern Colorado | W81EWF-20-SOI-0002 |
How to Cite
This resource is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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