Hamilton, S. K. and D. B. Weed. 2022. Release of suspended sediments and phosphorus during the 2019-2020 drawdown of Morrow Lake, a reservoir on the Kalamazoo River, Michigan. KBS LTER Special Publication. Zenodo, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7217398
Morrow Lake, a reservoir on the Kalamazoo River above Comstock (MI), was drawn down to its original streambed level in November 2019 to conduct dam repairs, and remained drained until mid-December 2020. Although efforts to mitigate sediment release from above the dam intensified over the summer of 2020, large amounts of new sediment deposition and high concentrations of suspended sediments were visible well downstream throughout and following the drawdown period. To our knowledge this was the first time this reservoir had been drained since its filling in the late 1930s.
In this report, we summarize measurements of the concentrations of total suspended solids (TSS) and total phosphorus (P) in water samples collected above and below Morrow Lake (Fig. 1). This sampling was part of a long-term study of water quality in multiple waterbodies in the region funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation. We sampled water over nearly 3 years preceding the drawdown as well as during the drawdown period. The concentrations were interpolated between sampling dates to estimate daily values, which were multiplied by daily discharge measurements to estimate total loads (transport). Methods are described in more detail at the end of this report.
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