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Prior to selecting Coon Creek, an intensive search for a suitable area was <br />made throughout Region 2 and a portion of Region 3 of the Forest Service. <br />Initially, it was hoped that an area could be selected that involved ownership <br />by several government agencies, the state, and the private sector — a true <br />partnership. Initial discussions in the late 1970's and the early 1980's <br />included the Denver Water Department, USDI Bureau of Land Management <br />(BLM), USDA Soil Conservation Service (now NRCS), Colorado Division <br />of Wildlife, Colorado Forest Service, and the State Engineer's Offices in <br />Colorado and Arizona, as well as the Regional Foresters in Regions 2 and 3 <br />(Troendle 1990). As the search for a site proceeded, the site in Wyoming <br />proved to be the only site available to meet technical objectives of the <br />demonstration. In contrast to the perception that extensive areas exist for the <br />application of the water yield technology, search for the demonstration site <br />presents testimony to the fact extensive land areas suitable for water yield <br />augmentation are not readily available on National Forest System (NFS) <br />lands in the inland west. <br />Coon Creek, the treatment watershed, is a 4133 acre drainage located in the <br />Sierra Madre Range on the Hayden District of the Medicine Bow National <br />Forest (MBNF) in Wyoming. In 1982, 8 -foot Cipoletti weirs were <br />constructed on each drainage to monitor stream flow. By 1987, a suitable <br />calibration had been achieved (Bevenger and Troendle 1987) and design and <br />implementation of the treatment began. Initially the intent was to harvest <br />approximately one -third of the Coon Creek watershed, as was done in <br />research at Fraser Experimental Forest. However, this was an operational <br />effort and technical considerations, as well as compliance with resource <br />constraints imposed by the MBNF Forest Plan (primarily for minimizing <br />impairment of visual quality as well as riparian and old- growth protection), <br />reduced the opportunity for harvest. Although minimal in nature, these <br />considerations and constraints resulted in only 24 percent of the watershed <br />area actually being impacted by either road construction or timber harvest. <br />Although the length of the post - treatment record for Coon Creek is short (5 <br />years), the impact the treatment had on seasonal water yield is quite clear. <br />Removal of vegetation from 23.7 percent of the area significantly increased <br />flow by an average of 3.0 inches (Troendle et al. 1998). The increase is <br />proportionally consistent with what has been observed to occur on small <br />experimental watersheds elsewhere, and extrapolation of empirical estimates <br />of change, based on process research at the Fraser Experimental Forest <br />I(Troendle and Reuss 1997), compare well with the observed changes at <br />1 15 <br />