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<br />Future water use trends in the Green River system should be documented. <br />The Bureau of Reclamation and the various conservancy districts should be <br />contacted to compile this information. It is suggested that the cumulative <br />depletion from the Little Snake, Yampa and Green rivers be plotted to illustrate <br />when depletions have had the greatest impact. Tributary depletions should be <br />analyzed to realize the greatest benefit from Flaming Gorge releases in the Lower <br />Green river. To further investigate the effects of depletion, double mass curves <br />should be plotted for the important gages: Lily, Maybell, Jensen, Ouray and Green <br />River. The double mass curves will assist in visualizing trends in the flow record. <br />Five year running averages are also an effective tool to investigate long term <br />trends in the flow record. <br /> <br />Reports by Andrews (1978, 1986), O'Brien (1984), Elliott et al. (1984), and <br />Butler (1988a) all provide estimates of the mean annual sediment load at various <br />gages in the Green River system. The gage with the greatest variability in the <br />sediment load estimates is the Lily gage on the Little Snake River. The variation in <br />the prediction of the sediment load is associated with the large scatter in the data. <br />Recent attempts by O'Brien (1984), Koch and Smillie (1986), and Butler (1988a) <br />to apply bias correction factors to the sediment rating curves have resulted in <br />much higher estimates of the mean annual sediment loads. <br /> <br />The relationship between the sediment loads in the Green, Yampa and Little <br />Snake rivers and the response of the channel morphology in the Green River <br />downstream of the Jensen gage should be investigated. Andrews (1986), Rei <br />(1991) and Lyons, et al. (1992) have analyzed the historic data and reached <br />conflicting conclusions regarding whether the Green River channel downstream of <br />Jensen is narrowing, aggrading, has reached equilibrium or will require decades to <br />complete adjustment to the flow regulation of Flaming Gorge Dam. Complete <br />analysis of the historic sediment load and discharge relationships at the gage <br /> <br />46 <br />