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<br />the Lees Ferry gaging station (Glen Canyon reach) <br />and a separate injection at the Lees Ferry gage and <br />sampling at locations down stream from Lees Ferry <br />(Grand Canyon reach), In each case, the injection at <br />Lees Ferry'was made two days hefore the correspond- <br />ing injection at the dam to avoid commingling of the <br />injections, <br />Established techniques for estimation of dye <br />dosage, sampling, and laboratory analysis of dye sam- <br />ples were used for this study (Wilson et ai" 1986; Kil- <br />patrick and Wilson, 1989), For the Glen Canyon <br />reach, a dosage of 21.5 kg of dye was used for the <br />1989 measurement and 9,1 kg of dye was used for <br />both 1991 measurements, For the Grand Canyon <br />reach, a dosage of 127 kg of dye (635 kg of 20 percent <br />stock solution) was injected in the first measurement, <br />Very low dispersion rates kept peak concentrations <br />higher than estimated during that measurement; <br />therefore, half the amount of dye - 63,5 kg - was <br />injected for the second measurement, <br />Dye was injected as a line source over a period of a <br />few minutes, For the 1989 measurement in the Glen <br />Canyon reach, dye was divided into four equal parts <br />and poured into the river simultaneously from the <br />transfonner deck of the dam, For the 1991 measure- <br />ment in the Glen Canyon reaches, dye was poured <br />from a boat as the boat moved across the center part <br />of a cross section of the channel just downstream from <br />the dam, For the Grand Canyon reach, dye was <br />poured from a raft as the raft passed through the cen- <br />ter two-thirds of the flow in the cableway section at <br />Lees Ferry, <br /> <br />Tracer Sampling and Sample Analysis. Most <br />samples were collected by dipping a sample bottle just <br />under the surface near the stream bank or tossing a <br />bottle in a sample holder into the flow a short dis- <br />tance from the bank, Samples were collected where <br />velocity was judged to be evenly distributed across the <br />channel, An automatic sampler (Kilpatrick, 1972) was <br />used to collect samples over much of the dye cloud at <br />Pumpkin Springs, For measurements in the Glen <br />Canyon reach, samples were collected from the center <br />of flow from cableways at gaging stations Colorado <br />River below Glen Canyon Dam (09379910) and Col- <br />orado River at Lees Ferry (09380000) (Figure 1). For <br />the May 1991 measurement, near-surface dip samples <br />were coUected from a boat with a hand sampler from <br />three points across the channel. Dye was sampled at <br />seven sites in the Grand Canyon reach during the <br />steady-flow measurement (Figure 1) and at six sites <br />during the unsteady-flow measurement, The leading <br />edge of the dye cloud was not sampled at the three <br />downstream sites during the unsteady-flow measure- <br />ment, <br /> <br />WATER RESOURCES BULLETIN <br /> <br />Graf <br /> <br />Filter fluorometers were used to measure dye con- <br />centration in the field to pennit adjustment of sam- <br />pling interval and to ensure that sampling continued <br />until dye was past the site. Samples were collected in <br />glass vials and transferred to the U,S, Geological Sur- <br />vey laboratory in Tucson, Samples were remeasured <br />under constant temperature conditions in the labora- <br />tory, <br />An equivalent background concentration of from <br />0,01 to 0,14 11g/l, resulting from suspended material <br />rather than dye fluorescence, was established at most <br />sites from measurements of samples collected before <br />arrival of the dye cloud, The background concentra- <br />tion was subtracted from concentrations measured in <br />the laboratory to give the dye concentrations used in <br />the analysis, <br /> <br />Data Analysis. The weight of injected dye recov- <br />ered at each sampling site during steady flow was <br />computed by multiplying the area under the time- <br />concentration curve by the discharge during sampling <br />and a factor to correct the units, The computation <br />showed that more than 90 percent of dye injected was <br />recovered at sampling sites, Rhodamine WT dye <br />decomposes in sunlight and adheres to sediment, <br />Losses in the range of 30-50 percent have been mea- <br />sured in other rivers (Graf, 1986), Initial estimates at <br />two sites sampled during the unsteady flow measure- <br />ment indicate that dye Joss was greater during <br />unsteady flow, Greater loss may be attributed to <br />stranding of dye in eddy zones when stage dropped, <br />Because recovery of dye was very high, concentrations <br />presented in this report have not been adjusted to <br />account for dye losses, <br />Curves of dye concentration as a function of time at <br />a sampling site were plotted, and the first three <br />moments of the distributions were computed using <br />numerical integration, The first moment is dye-cloud <br />centroid - the rate of travel of the centroid gives <br />velocity through the measured reach, The second and <br />third moments - variance and skewness - are mea- <br />sures of the dispersion or spreading of the dye cloud, <br />A quantity called unit-peak concentration was <br />defined in previous studies (Kilpatrick and Taylor, <br />1986; Hubbard et ai" 1982) to compare results from <br />different measurements, Unit-peak concentration is a <br />peak concentration that has been normalized for dis- <br />charge, amount of dye injected, and dye loss during <br />measurement, For this study, unit-peak concentration <br />was computed by dividing the measured peak dye <br />concentration by the weight of dye injected and multi- <br />plying by the discharge, Dye loss was insignificant <br />during each measurement, and no adjustment of con- <br />centration for loss was required, <br />Discharges at each gaging station were detennined <br />from recorded stage and a stage-discharge relation - <br /> <br />270 <br />