BOARD02267

• Board Meeting Date: 5/27/1968
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

6047

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water. Yellowstone is probably one of the
greatest natural laboratories in the world be-
cause there we have had a constant input of
superheated waters for hundreds, if not
thousands, of years. So if there is anywhere
that we have a natural climatic community,
both floral and faunal, it should be in the
Yellowstone area. This is the reason why we
selected, this is the reason we placed initial
emphasis on, this area.

We have produced two Master of Science
theses on primarily the physical and chemical
effects of the thermal input into the Firehole
River. Our more recent work has been on the
barrier effects, or the so-called barrier
effects, of heoted effluents in water. Of
course, there is a great deal of concern about
this at the present time, especially in view
of all the thermal reactors and thermal plants
that are being built at a rather fantastic
rate around the country.

If I could, we'll just take a look at a
very few slides of some of the Yellowstone
area and some of the reasons why we picked this
as a natural study zone. (Dr. Hagen used a
screen and slides to illustrate this part of
his presentation). The Firehole itself is a
typical trout stream. It originates high in
the pitchstone plateau area of Yellowstone and
then as it enters the Old Faithful area, it
comes in contact with rather gross amounts of
superheated waters. What do these do as far
as trout habitat are concerned?

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One thing that we were amazed to find is
that the laminar effect of superheated waters
on top of a natural flowing stream does not
prOduce the barrier or the serious" barrier that
many people have been writing and reporting on.
As a matter of fact, in most of our studies we
are finding that this laminar effect, sometimes
no more than 25 millimeters thick at the most,
of superheated waters, will carry itself along
the surface of a cool trout stream and dissipate