Saturday, July 22, 2017

The greening of the Elwha delta

I was out on the Elwha delta over the last two days, working with the staff from the US Geological Survey and Department of Ecology on the roughly annual topo/bathy survey of the Elwha delta. My role is to collect grain size photos and sediment samples. As we were cruising around the delta this year I was struck again by how the vegetation is really taking off on the new delta deposits laid down during dam removal. The photo above was shot this morning looking north (towards Vancouver Island) from roughly where the "A" is on the map below: and here is the view from the same location in May 2012: Such an incredible transformation. A huge thank you to Emily Portillo from the Washington Conservation Corps for assisting with the grain size sampling over the last two days!