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EXPERIENCE <br />Monitoring the effectiveness and validating response to the road related mitigation practices <br />Impiemented on the Pike's Peak Highway. Pike's Peak Highway, Colorado. 2003 - present <br />This 15 year monitoring effort is designed to determine effectiveness and validate response to road <br />related mitigation practices (erosion/water control) implemented on the Pike's Peak highway as part of <br />the Settlement Agreement between the Sierra Club and the United States Department of Agriculture - <br />Forest Service in Sierra Club v. Venneman, Civil Action No. 98-M-662 (D. Colo.). Beginning in 2003, the <br />effective ness-mo n ito ring plan has been designed to determine how well the mitigation practices <br />implemented contribute to meeting their objectives and focuses on the 14 mile-fong, 300 foot-wide <br />highway corridor (150 feet each side of highway centerline) starting at mile marker 7 and continuing to <br />the summit. Validation monitoring documents how the properly implemented intervention practices <br />affect the riparian, wetland and aquatic system of catchments within the influence of the Pike's Peak <br />highway. <br />Blue Mountain Consultants (BMC - METI Contractor) was responsible for project management, <br />budgeting, procurement of equipment and supplies, field/office/lab protocol development and <br />revisions, hiring and training field crews, development of data library, data reduction and analysis, and <br />reporting for the first 4 years of the study (2003-2006). Since the 2006 field season, BMC has acted as <br />senior technical advisor responsible for training field crews and data quality control. Monitoring <br />activities include installation and operation of 3 precipitation gauges, geomorphic surveys of streams, <br />drainage ditches, conveyance channels and roads (nearly 600 permanent cross sections per year, <br />profiles, planforms using either a Trimble 5603 or S6 robotic total station), particles size distributions of <br />bed, bank and bar samples, pebbfe counts, topographic surveys of sediment traps, suspended sediment <br />grab samples, riparian vegetation sampting, and photographic documentation of everything. Except for <br />the calculation of volumetric change between successive topographic surveys in sediment traps, all data <br />reduction, analyses, and graphing are done using customized MS Excel templates and macros developed <br />by Blue Mountain Consultant inctuding channel geometry calculations, particle size distributions, and <br />graphical overlays of surveys/samples. (Computation of volumetric change in sediment traps from <br />topographic surveys was subcontracted to 64ack Creek Hydrology, LLC). <br />Study plans, annual reports, and data available at: <br />http://www.fs.fed.us/emc/rig/pikespeak/index.shtml <br />Contact: <br />Sandy Winkler <br />METI Contractor - Monitoring Specialist <br />WO Ecosystem Management Staff <br />Resource Information Group - Fort Collins <br />USDA Forest Service <br />2150 Centre Ave., Bldg. A, Suite 300 <br />Fort Collins, CO 80526 <br />(970) 295-5718 Ph <br />(970) 215-4793 Cell <br />PRRIP - Geomorphic Monitoring 9 of 20 Blue Mountain Consultants