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<br />FINAL REPORT, November 2003 <br />High-jlow Requirements for the Duchesne River <br /> <br />active in the middle part of the study area in 1936 was excluded from the main channel width <br />calculations. <br />Error in calculating subreach channel width stems from error in the determination of <br />channel and bar polygon areas arising from three primary sources: mapping error, digitizing <br />error, and photo distortion. Error in mapping channel area can occur where differences in <br />discharge between various photo series produces the illusion of greater or lesser width of the <br />active channel. This is a potential source of error in this study, as discharge at the time <br />photographs were taken ranged from 8 fe Is to 2,430 ft3 Is (Table 2). However, the mapping <br />scheme employed in this study was designed to minimize this source of error. The 'low bar' <br />mapping unit was applied to the emergent portions of lateral bars and riffles visible at low <br />discharges and other low-elevation bar surfaces. These low bars are progressively submerged at <br />higher discharge so that increasing stage results in both an increase in water area and a <br />corresponding decrease in the area of low bars. As the low-flow channel was defmed to include <br />low bars, these changes have no effect on the area assigned to the low-flow channel as long as <br />flow is contained within the low-flow channel banks. These banks, which separate the low-flow <br />channel area from the higher bar surfaces, are steep and well-defmed, with relief of 0.5 m or <br />more, and can be distinguished on aerial photographs when viewed through a stereoscope. We <br />demonstrate below that bankfull discharge on this portion of the Duchesne River, when the water <br />surface would be expected to cover significant portions of the high bar surface, is greater than <br />3,000 ft3/s in most locations. Discharges associated with all aerial photographs used in this study <br />are well below this threshold. It was assumed that error in distinguishing high bar surfaces from <br />the low-flow surfaces due to fluctuations in discharge constituted less than 10 percent of the low- <br />flow channel width in most subreaches. A notable exception occurred in subreach 2 on the 1948 <br />photographs where the river had abandoned a long section of its channel and was in the process <br />of incising a new channel farther to the west. Relatively high discharge of the Duchesne River at <br />the time, coupled with backwater effects from the Green River, may have produced a significant <br />exaggeration of channel width through this area of avulsion (Figure 6). The abandoned channel <br />is indicated with a dashed line in the figure. <br />Mapping error associated with the placement of unit boundaries between high bars and <br />other terrestrial units cannot be separated from the subjective nature of these boundaries, which <br />often pass through gradations in vegetation density or elevation lacking sharp breaks. Variability <br /> <br />16 <br />