There is much discussion about how plantation forestry affects streamflow in dry (lowflow) seasons, especially as climate change may exacerbate water scarcity. Analysis of 60‐year records of daily streamflow from eight paired‐basin experiments in the Andrews Forest revealed that the conversion of old‐growth forest to Douglas‐fir plantations had a major effect on summer streamflow.
Lookout Creek’s average discharge is the equivalent of a fully-loaded concrete truck rumbling down the river bed every 2.2 seconds!
Lookout Ck mean annual discharge - 121.83 cubic feet per second (cfs)
A standard concrete truck holds 10 cubic yards or 270 cubic feet (cf).
270 cf ÷ 121.83 cfs = 2.21 s
Concrete trucks appear to be 7.168 m long (google) and if you chained them, bumper to bumper with no space in between, the “train of concrete trucks” would be traveling 7.25 mph.
The largest snowpack recorded at the Andrews Forest was 4.4 meters (or 14 feet), at the Upper Lookout Meterological Station in 2008. The water storage in the snowpack on this date was equal to a depth of 1.56 meters (or 5 feet) of liquid water. Learn more about our climate measurements on our Research Programs page.
The amount of rain that falls at the Andrews Forest over a whole year is 7 feet (2.1 meters). That's 6 inches (15 centimeters) more than the height of LeBron James the basketball player!
In a 2016 publication from Andrews Forest, researcher Alba Argerich and colleagues suggest that forested watersheds may not store quite as much carbon as previously thought. Small, headwater streams, such as those found in the Andrews Forest, import a higher than expected amount of carbon. See the press release.