Lake Mills Delta

Jumped on an opportunity to visit the Lake Mills delta with Tim Randle of the Bureau of Reclamation and Gary Smillie and Brian Cluer of the National Park Service. Relative to the Lake Aldwell delta, the Lake Mills delta is huge - maybe 3-4 times the area, and seems to be composed of coarser sediment in general. Given that it is the primary trap for most of the sediment production in the watershed this makes sense. Overall it is an astonishing feature to visit. Tim, who had visited a month earlier, was shocked by the amount of change - a shifted river channel, new delta lobes, and a rapidly prograding delta front. It is a landscape in motion, with bigger changes coming over the next year...

A series of photos from the morning...