Water quality monitoring for Fort Laramie National Historic Site: 2018 data report
Rockwood SL and Ashton IW. 2020. Water quality monitoring for Fort Laramie National Historic Site: 2018 data report. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/FOLA/NRDS—2020/1279. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
The Northern Great Plains Inventory and Monitoring Network (NGPN) began monitoring water quality in the Laramie River at Fort Laramie National Historic Site (FOLA) in 2015 (Ashton and Rockwood 2020), with the assistance of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This report summarizes the data collected during the 2018 ice-free season (March 27 through November 2) for streamflow, water temperature, dissolved oxygen, specific conductance, and pH. Compared to the first sampling period in 2015, which was a record flood year, 2018 was significantly drier. Discharge on the Laramie River peaked at only 329 cubic feet per second in April of 2018, compared to a peak of over 4570 cubic feet per second in late May of 2015. A summary of our results can be found in Descriptive Statistics Summary tables for the ice-free season (Table 3) and for each month (Table 4). Notably, water temperatures were warm in the summer months and above the Wyoming state water quality standard for cold water fisheries from May through September. NGPN’s collaboration with USGS supported real-time and archived access to this data through the USGS National Water Information System Website, where it remains available to the public.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Rockwood, Stephanie; Ashton, Isabel
- Date of Issue
- 2020-06
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- FOLA , NGPN , NRSS
- Keywords
- monitoring report, water quality monitor