Marmot & Little Sandy Dam Removal

Transcription

1 Marmot & Little Sandy Dam Removal Final Report August 2009 Bruce McCammon Photography NW Harding Ct. Portland, OR Contract Number AG-046W-P

2 Contents Introduction... 1 Photopoint Locations... 1 Field Technique... 4 Station identification... 4 Camera setup and photography... 5 Image Post-processing... 5 RAW conversion... 5 Directory structure... 6 File naming convention... 7 Panorama creation... 8 Results... 9 Appendix Site Reference photos Camera setup... 32

3 Introduction This report is submitted to the USDA Forest Service, Mount Hood National Forest as substantial completion of contracted work. The contract was designed to provide photographic coverage of channel, riparian and dam areas in the vicinities of the Marmot Dam and the Little Sandy Dam prior to and after dam removal. This report contains photos and information that spans the period June 2007 to September This timeframe covers the pre- and post-removal periods at the Marmot Dam site and the pre-removal and immediate post-removal periods at the Little Sandy Dam site. Additional information will be added to this report when the final set of photos is taken in August or September of The additional photos to be added will show conditions at the Little Sandy Dam area after one high flow season as well as additional photos of the Marmot Dam sites. The monitoring conducted under this contract was part of a coordinated monitoring plan involving federal, state and private organizations. The primary photopoint locations were coordinated with and accepted by the US Forest Service (Mt. Hood National Forest and Pacific Northwest Experiment Station), the USGS, the City of Portland and the Sandy River Watershed Council. The photo monitoring covered here was also coordinated with academic institutions that are involved in monitoring and analyzing the effects of the removal of the Marmot and Little Sandy dams. This contract was initiated by the Mt. Hood National Forest. Dan Shively is the designated Contracting Officer Representative. Connie Athman provided contract inspection and coordination service. Todd Parker, Zig Zag Ranger District, Mt. Hood National Forest provide valuable field information and access coordination. Photopoint locations The photo monitoring strategy was pretty simple establish a series of locations that could be revisited to allow sequential photography to record changes in the channel and riparian zones along the Sandy and Little Sandy Rivers in the vicinity of the Marmot and Little Sandy dams. One of the coordinated monitoring group partners requested that the initial set of photo point locations be increased to include shots from several bridges crossing the Sandy River and Bull Run River. Five bridges were added four crossing the Sandy River and one crossing the Bull Run River. Figure 1 shows the general location of the photo points in context with the Sandy River watershed. Locating the photo points on the ground was complicated by the robust deciduous and coniferous riparian plant community. While access to the areas is quite good, finding sites that offered visibility of the channel in both upstream and downstream directions was much more limited. Every attempt was made to locate the photo points so that the site would not be affected by channel changes after dam removal. It didn t always work that way. Two sites, M1 and M2, were totally destroyed during the removal of Marmot dam or shortly after the dam removal. 1

4 Site M1 was located above Marmot dam. The Sandy River channel adjusted tens of feet laterally and 10 to 15 feet vertically after dam removal. The bank that site M1 had been on was totally removed by these channel adjustment. Site M2 was initially located near the dam in an area believed to be safe from dam deconstruction activity. This proved to be an error since the entire site was totally regraded during dam deconstruction. The M1 and M2 sites were replaced with sites M1A and M2A, respectively. Figure 1. Photopoint locations Additionally, the first site located at the mouth of the Sandy River (SRD1) was replaced by a location downstream to provide more elevation above the river and a more encompassing view of the river and delta area. 2

5 Station Latitude Longitude Description M1A N45⁰ W122⁰ Uppermost station on Sandy River M2A N45⁰ W122⁰ Upslope along low standard access road to site M1A; in the Marmot dam vicinity M3 N45⁰ W122⁰ Below Marmot dam near USGS gage M4 N45⁰ W122⁰ ~0.9 mile downstream from Marmot dam M4A N45⁰ W122⁰ ~ 100 yards downstream from site M4 MFB N45⁰ W122⁰ Midspan on the Marmot dam foot bridge MS1 N45⁰ W122⁰ South bank of Sandy River, upstream from Marmot dam footbridge MS2 N45⁰ W122⁰ On top of a bedrock exposure in the center of the Sandy River channel; accessible only at low flow SRD2 N45⁰ W122⁰ Near the mouth of the Sandy River; west bank LS1 N45⁰ W122⁰ On the cutbank above the Little Sandy dam LS2 N45⁰ W122⁰ Downstream from the Little Sandy dam; on a terrace above the channel LS3 N45⁰ W122⁰ At channel elevation at bottom of construction road access to channel; above dam LS4 N45⁰ W122⁰ On south bank of Little Sandy River; accessed from road above site Table 1. List of photo point locations and station location code. 3

6 All the above stations, with the exception of the Sandy River delta site, are shown in greater detail in Figure 2. Figure 2. Station Locations Field Technique Station identification A variety of markings were used to identify the photo point locations in the field. When possible a three foot piece of rebar was pounded into the ground and capped with an aluminum cap that had the site ID stamped into the top. Bridge railings were marked by filing a small notch into the railing. Paint was used to mark any site that is located on bedrock. All sites except the bridge sites had location photos taken to document the actual photo point location relative to local landmarks and topography. 4

7 Camera setup and photography Many pictures have been taken during this photo documentation. The majority of the images were made as a sequence of images panning across the scene to form a panorama of the channel area. All panorama files were made with the same camera body and lens. A Nikon D200 camera and a 20mm Nikkor lens were used exclusively for the panorama images. I occasionally used a 10.5mm Nikkor fisheye lens at the photo points. This was done to supplement the photo record and to provide a single image record of the scene rather than a panorama formed by stitching together numerous images. None of the fisheye images have been used in the results presented in this report. The fisheye image files are included on the DVD of images and can be found in the miscellaneous directory on the DVD. A Manfrotto tripod fitted with a Manfrotto leveling base and Nodal Ninja panorama head was used for the capture of all but the June 2007 images. The June 2007 images did not utilize the Nodal Ninja head. The Nodal Ninja panorama head allows for more accurate capture of the image sequence and a much better composite image after stitching. After setting the tripod over the photo point mark the tripod was leveled using the leveling base. The Nodal Ninja panorama head was checked for level across the range of the image sequence and adjustments were made as necessary to ensure that the camera was level. June 2007 images were captured with the camera in a horizontal (landscape) orientation. After post-processing these images I decided to switch to vertical (portrait) orientation for all subsequent images. This provides more scene capture in each of the individual images and allows for more of the channel area to be incorporated. Images were captured by setting the camera view to the left extent of the scene and sequentially moving the camera through the series using the detent settings on the Nodal Ninja panorama head. Image capture was made by using a cable release rather than manually pushing on the shutter. Post-processing Raw conversion All images were captured as RAW rather than JPG files. This provides a great deal of flexibility to adjust exposure or white balance prior to the creation of the panorama composite. All RAW images were converted to JPG for delivery to the Mt. Hood National Forest using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 5

8 Directory structure The digital files that accompany this report are divided into 5 broad categories: 1. Miscellaneous files photos taken at locations other than the established photo points or with different camera bodies or lens combinations 2. Breach Sequence photos taken on October 19, 2007 during the breach operation at Marmot Dam. 3. Bridges all image files taken as either single views or panorama sequences at the Revenue Bridge, Bull Run Bridge, Dodge Park Bridge, Troutdale Bridge or the Stark Street Bridge 4. Panoramas all images that have been stitched together to form composite views of channel conditions at a given site. This set of images represents the most useful, completely processed files delivered under this contract. 5. Source files all the individual image files that were used to form the panoramas. In past delivery of image files to the Forest Service I learned that some of the files were too large to be used within some applications on the government computers. To accommodate any future use by the Forest Service I include two sets of panorama and source image files. The first set is the full size images for the stitched panoramas and the source files used in each panoramic composite. The second set is comprised of panorama and source images that have been resized to never exceed 1024 pixels horizontally or 768 pixels vertically. There are over 1800 image files on the DVDs that accompany this report. Organizing the files for future use was an important part of the entire photo documentation process. Since the files were all generated over a sequence of field visits on different days, the easiest way to store and reference the files was by day and then by station within any given day. However, the real utility of the images is to show the change at a given station over time. This required a different filing and organization strategy. The digital files included on the DVDs are filed by photo point, by year and by day within the year. An example is shown below. 6

9 Source Files o Marmot Dam Site M1A 2007 o M1A_070507_JPG o M1A _JPG_Small o M1A_071607_JPG o M1A_071607_JPG_Small o M1A_082207_JPG o M1A_082207_JPG_Small o M1A_092607_JPG o M1A _JPG_Small o M1A_102407_JPG o M1A_102407_JPG_Small 2008 o M1A_070208_JPG o M1A_070208_JPG_Small o M1A_073108_JPG o M1A_070308_JPG_Small o M1A_091908_JPG o M1A_091908_JPG_Small File naming convention The directories ending with _JPG contain the full size image files. Directories ending with _Small contain image files that have been resized to 1024 x 768 pixels. Within a directory for any date the individual files follow the same naming convention as the directory. For example: M1A_070507_001.jpg (M1A = station ID; = date of capture; _001 = sequence no.) Files in the Small directories are labeled the same and an s is appended to the file name (M1A_070507_001s.jpg) The Marmot Footbridge, Revenue and Bull Run bridge sites have directories that contain images for upstream and downstream views. The directory naming and file naming within a directory include D for downstream and U for upstream. (e.g., MFBU_091908_JPG_Small). 7

10 Naming Convention Bridges I used an abbreviation for each bridge location as follows: Abbreviation BRD BRU BBRU BBRD BDP BSS BT location Bridge Revenue, downstream Bridge Revenue, upstream Bridge Bull Run, upstream Bridge Bull Run, downstream Bridge Dodge Park Bridge Stark Street Bridge - Troutdale The date was appended to the abbreviation to form unique file names, e.g., BRD_ jpg (Bridge- Revenue- downstream view, July 16, 2007) Panorama creation Sequences of individual image files captured at each site were stitched together to form a composite panorama view. The program Panorama Maker Pro, version 4 by ArcSoft was used to perform the stitching. This program uses advanced algorithms to match and blend the image sequence into a final composite. Figure 3. Blending 8 images into a single composite Figure 3 is an example of the blending zones used to make a final panorama from site M1A after the Marmot Dam was removed. 8

11 Results The following pages present a series of panoramic views for each station on 3 dates: July 16, 2007 (pre-breach), October 24, 2007 (5 days post-breach) and September 19, The reader is referred back to Figure 1 and Figure 2 for location information for each station. Stations M1, M2 and SRD1 are not included since these stations did not persevere over time. 9

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30 Marmot Dam breach October 19,

31 Appendix The following pages contain photographs taken at most of the field photo point sites. The intent is to provide some visual context for the photo point to make it easier to relocate the photo points in the future. Additionally, one photograph shows the full camera setup as used to make the panorama sequences at each photopoint. 29

32 Site Reference Photos Site 1A Site 2A Site 3 30

33 Site 4 Site 4A Site MS1 Site MS2 31

34 Nikon D200 camera Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 lens Nodal Ninja panorama head Manfrotto leveling base Bogen double bubble level Nikon cable release Bogen Manfrotto tripod 32