Number of streams along the trail?

[Tatumj96]

Hello everybody,
I am a student in college studying geology and have an idea for research. I want to take a sample at every stream I cross while doing a thru-hike and test them for pollution after I finish. The reason I have come here is to ask if anybody has any idea how many streams one would cross during a thru-hike? A close to exact number from somebody's experience or guide book would be great, but anything within a 100 of the actual number would be good. I just need an idea of how many sample bottles I need to bring with me.
Thanks in advance for any and all help!

[rafe]

No way to count... I mean, you'd have to designate a "minimum" stream size or flow and in any case streams ebb and flow, they may be raging one day and dry a week later.

[bigcranky]

Tough question, you might be able to count "named" streams but then there are probably thousands of little seasonal brooks the trail crosses that would fit rafe's description of "dry this week and raging the next". I guess you could take a GPS reading at each crossing where you take a sample. You'll need a lot of sample vials. :)

[Slo-go'en]

There are a S**t load of streams (or creeks) from tiny to major. (Like the James, Hudson and Delaware to name a few)

The AWOL guide lists most reliable creeks and streams so you could just go threw the book and count them I'll leave that as an exercise for the student.

[Tatumj96]

As far as the definition of a stream, that ranges from dry creeks to the biggest rivers. Its okay if they are dry sometimes, doesn't matter. I mostly just need an idea of the vials I need. I read an estimate of 1800 streams on MEGA-Transect along the AT, but I was unsure if that was the count of streams one crosses on the average trail, or if that was every nearby stream in the area. I will most likely have to have around 100 sample bottles waiting for me at every post office along the way I think.

[Traveler]

How are you defining a "stream"? Are you using drainage basin or micro basin size in square feet or acres or using a GPM flow rate above a certain amount 24 hours or more after a weather event? Are you only going to measure wet weather activated run off streams, or more substantial water drainage basin? Or are you going to sample springs that appear from the ground with no visible source?

Many states likely have sampling data of the major "named" water flows or bodies (typically visible on AT maps) that you can review and assess how many vials per State you will need. For estimation purposes, I would say there is one named waterway per two miles of trail, which would translate to about 1,000 or so vials. If you are sampling all water ways that cross or flow into the trail (dry or active), you will likely need over 3,000 vials and thats at the low end.

[daddytwosticks]

Are you limiting those that you "cross" or including those that you "come upon". If it's the former, depending on the definition, it could be into the four figures. Just my observation from the very southern parts. :)

[upstream]

What kind of pollution are you sampling for? Don't you need 3 or more vials per stream, one for metals, one for volatiles, one for biologicals? Aren't there refrigeration requirements for volatile samplings? I met a guy carrying a refrigerator for his insulin, I guess you could carry something like that.

Don't biological pollutants and indicators require immediate analyisis, within a certain number of hours?

We have done sampling on hiker water sources in GA, and maybe other clubs have done the same. Have you talked to the organizers of the Mega Transect project?

[DSettahr]

Dittoing upstream's comments. I'm a Masters Student studying recreation management and recreation ecology. I had originally hoped to do water quality sampling in a backcountry recreation area from my Master's Thesis, but the difficulties inherent in doing water quality samples in remote locations made such a project very impractical. Not only do the samples add up pretty significantly in terms of volume and weight, but you need to keep the water chilled with ice packs in a cooler while transporting them to a lab. Some of the water quality tests need to be performed in the lab within 8 hours of sampling, or else the results aren't considered to be very reliable.

This is pretty much the main reason why recreational impacts on water quality is a topic within the broader realm of Recreation Ecology that is still very poorly understood.

I don't want to discourage you from the idea of doing some sort of research project on your through hike (I am considering doing something myself), but the idea you've chosen would most likely result in a waste of your time and effort as the results wouldn't be very accurate.

[Stubby]

Thinking back on some recent 10-mile days, I probably crossed about 10 per day. I'm counting everything from a real solid flow to a trickle/seep with some sort of flow. Thinking in terms of what could I get water out of, if I was low and didn't want to risk the next expected water hole being dry. If you are counting that, go with 2,000.

[Tatumj96]

How are you defining a "stream"? Are you using drainage basin or micro basin size in square feet or acres or using a GPM flow rate above a certain amount 24 hours or more after a weather event? Are you only going to measure wet weather activated run off streams, or more substantial water drainage basin? Or are you going to sample springs that appear from the ground with no visible source?

Many states likely have sampling data of the major "named" water flows or bodies (typically visible on AT maps) that you can review and assess how many vials per State you will need. For estimation purposes, I would say there is one named waterway per two miles of trail, which would translate to about 1,000 or so vials. If you are sampling all water ways that cross or flow into the trail (dry or active), you will likely need over 3,000 vials and thats at the low end.

Our stream definition is any flowing water, no minimum or maximum size. The larger streams at lower elevations are of less value to me than the smaller headwater streams just because I want to find out how early pollution becomes significant.

[Tatumj96]

Are you limiting those that you "cross" or including those that you "come upon". If it's the former, depending on the definition, it could be into the four figures. Just my observation from the very southern parts. :)

I willl sample anything I cross on the trail, anything within a few hundred feet of the trail that I spot, and any near areas I stray from the trail to explore such as near a camping spot.

[Tatumj96]

What kind of pollution are you sampling for? Don't you need 3 or more vials per stream, one for metals, one for volatiles, one for biologicals? Aren't there refrigeration requirements for volatile samplings? I met a guy carrying a refrigerator for his insulin, I guess you could carry something like that.

Don't biological pollutants and indicators require immediate analyisis, within a certain number of hours?

We have done sampling on hiker water sources in GA, and maybe other clubs have done the same. Have you talked to the organizers of the Mega Transect project?

I plan to take the samples and immediately filter them with the proper syringe filters into 15mL vials. I will keep these with me for a couple days at a time until I can mail them back to the university where they will be stored in a refrigerator. When I get back to school, I will analyze the via ICP-OES, which analyzes them by vaporizing the samples in plasma with argon gas and identifying the elements present by their emission line spectrums. This way I will only need one vial per stream, and the immediate filtering will eliminate extreme refrigeration needs. Since I am only interested in the amounts of individual elements present, no immediate analysis is required.

[Tatumj96]

I greatly appreciate everybody's replies. It seems like the 1,800 streams was a reasonable estimate, but I will likely plan for at least 2,000. I must now decide if this is possible logistically, as organizing and carrying the samples and filtering equipment themselves make this very difficult. Thanks for all the help!

[Stubby]

Don't know if it was mentioned, and you probably already planned this, but... a bump box would be handy. Every few days go into town, go to the post office, mail your samples, then pick up your bump box, get out another batch of vials, and then mail the bump box to the next town about 3 days ahead.

[Another Kevin]

There are a lot more streams than show on the topo maps, depending on how you count intermittent and ephemeral watercourses.

This map (http://kbk.is-a-geek.net/maps/20150606/20150606npt0606.html) isn't from the A-T, but it's still pretty typical of what you encounter in any mountainous area in the East. If you select 'USGS Topo (ArcGIS)' or 'Kevin's Map' in the dropdown at upper right, you'll see tracks overlaid on a topo map. If you roll the mouse over the pushpins, you'll see where I waypointed stream crossings and bridges (often single-log). You'll see that even some of the bridged crossings, while at obvious reentrants in the topography, are not significant enough streams to be blue-lined on the topo map. On that day trip, admittedly in a wet June, I count 21 crossings of flowing water in about 7.5 miles of trail. (I didn't waypoint all the streams on the roadwalk back to my car.) Six of these were significant enough that the trail maintainers bridged them.

This is pretty typical of the wet Eastern woodlands. The A-T may be slightly drier because if often follows bone-dry ridge lines, with the streams below the trail. But expect that "any flowing water" may involve multiple crossings per mile. You might want to restrict your collection to "any permanent stream in NHD" or "any watercourse having an NHD reachcode" (the latter restriction would ensure that you can identify the bounds of your stream's drainage basin, since NHD carries that information).

With a good GIS setup, I don't think it would be that difficult to plot the intersections of NHD flowlines with the Trail centerline and come up with an ordered list. Those would even give you a consistent labeling system for your field notes, and allow groupings like "those streams feeding the Susquehanna" or "those streams feeding the Delaware by way of the Neversink" so that you can assess what is downstream of your samples.

[Fredt4]

With the recent rain, you could possibly double the number of steams. During Hurricane Irene I came across three decent size streams on a trail with supposedly no streams. One almost forced me to turn back.

[Tatumj96]

There are a lot more streams than show on the topo maps, depending on how you count intermittent and ephemeral watercourses.

This map (http://kbk.is-a-geek.net/maps/20150606/20150606npt0606.html) isn't from the A-T, but it's still pretty typical of what you encounter in any mountainous area in the East. If you select 'USGS Topo (ArcGIS)' or 'Kevin's Map' in the dropdown at upper right, you'll see tracks overlaid on a topo map. If you roll the mouse over the pushpins, you'll see where I waypointed stream crossings and bridges (often single-log). You'll see that even some of the bridged crossings, while at obvious reentrants in the topography, are not significant enough streams to be blue-lined on the topo map. On that day trip, admittedly in a wet June, I count 21 crossings of flowing water in about 7.5 miles of trail. (I didn't waypoint all the streams on the roadwalk back to my car.) Six of these were significant enough that the trail maintainers bridged them.

This is pretty typical of the wet Eastern woodlands. The A-T may be slightly drier because if often follows bone-dry ridge lines, with the streams below the trail. But expect that "any flowing water" may involve multiple crossings per mile. You might want to restrict your collection to "any permanent stream in NHD" or "any watercourse having an NHD reachcode" (the latter restriction would ensure that you can identify the bounds of your stream's drainage basin, since NHD carries that information).

With a good GIS setup, I don't think it would be that difficult to plot the intersections of NHD flowlines with the Trail centerline and come up with an ordered list. Those would even give you a consistent labeling system for your field notes, and allow groupings like "those streams feeding the Susquehanna" or "those streams feeding the Delaware by way of the Neversink" so that you can assess what is downstream of your samples.

Thanks, this is greatly helpful! I have limited GIS experience but I think your ideas are exactly what I needed with being able to identify drainage basin boundaries.

[travelking]

tatumj: seems like you have decided on a number of vials to take. I'm curious as to your plans to carry all of these or are you planning on mail drops, also are you planning on doing this alone? Seems like a lot for one person to carry along with all your necessary gear. As far as the other Q&A's it seems to me that it really doesn't matter if it's a creek, stream, spring or river etc... Unless you're targeting one particular water source, but if not, just sample everything you come across and label your vials accordingly. I'm sure you have considered this and will probably do it this way, thus giving you the opportunity to see if there's any similarities between one particular water source or another. When do you plan on starting the "thru-hike"? I would think the time of year will also impact the number of vials needed. I'm planning my thru-hike for April 2016 (starting at Springer) so if you want some help for a few hundred miles let me know, I doubt I would want to help you for the whole journey, but I wouldn't mind helping for awhile. I think it's a really good idea, and I would love to see the results, however it sounds like a lot of time spent collecting, labeling, packaging, mailing etc.... You may end up having to do it in sections, which also might result in different readings. You could take a reading from a river in the spring and then again in the fall and get drastically different readings, based on environmental changes or habits from local factories or businesses. It would be great to see several samples tested from the same spot at different times of year over the course of several years to get long term, and seasonal results. I didn't read everything above, so maybe some of my post has been addressed already, if so sorry for the redundancy, and I'm sorry if I started to ramble, but the more I think about it the more opportunities I see for testing. Well good luck with your venture and my offer stands, if you want / need help I'll be happy to assist.

[Tatumj96]

tatumj: seems like you have decided on a number of vials to take. I'm curious as to your plans to carry all of these or are you planning on mail drops, also are you planning on doing this alone? Seems like a lot for one person to carry along with all your necessary gear. As far as the other Q&A's it seems to me that it really doesn't matter if it's a creek, stream, spring or river etc... Unless you're targeting one particular water source, but if not, just sample everything you come across and label your vials accordingly. I'm sure you have considered this and will probably do it this way, thus giving you the opportunity to see if there's any similarities between one particular water source or another. When do you plan on starting the "thru-hike"? I would think the time of year will also impact the number of vials needed. I'm planning my thru-hike for April 2016 (starting at Springer) so if you want some help for a few hundred miles let me know, I doubt I would want to help you for the whole journey, but I wouldn't mind helping for awhile. I think it's a really good idea, and I would love to see the results, however it sounds like a lot of time spent collecting, labeling, packaging, mailing etc.... You may end up having to do it in sections, which also might result in different readings. You could take a reading from a river in the spring and then again in the fall and get drastically different readings, based on environmental changes or habits from local factories or businesses. It would be great to see several samples tested from the same spot at different times of year over the course of several years to get long term, and seasonal results. I didn't read everything above, so maybe some of my post has been addressed already, if so sorry for the redundancy, and I'm sorry if I started to ramble, but the more I think about it the more opportunities I see for testing. Well good luck with your venture and my offer stands, if you want / need help I'll be happy to assist.

Well, I was originally planning on doing a southbound thru-hike starting April or June of 2018, but if I decide to do this I would either have to do a thru-hike the summer of 2016 or 2017, or possibly one half of the trail each of those summers. My school currently has weekly recording of a watershed we own, and it is actually interesting to see. We just had a drought followed by a 100 year rainfall last week and have some great results we are sorting through now!

[fiddlehead]

Don't know if the OP is worried about the number of streams ONLY so he can write a paper on something.
But, I for one, rarely, get my water from streams.
Small seeps is my first choice.
Piped springs second

If and when I do have to get water from a stream, that's the only time I treat it (with chlorine), and like I said: that's rare.

Now. How many small seeps and piped springs are on the trail? thousands.

[RockDoc]

Yes, a good GIS Specialist could get that number for you in about 10 minutes. But the number of individual drainage basins might be a more useful parameter? Some areas have streams every 10 feet...

[Tennessee Viking]

Consider doing a day hike or small weekend section between Max Patch to Hot Springs on the AT or MST along the parkway. That will give a gauge of how much collection you will be doing.

[ATaBoy]

I am planning a late March start from Springer. I know temps can go subfreezing at that time. Is there any viable risk of water source(spring/stream etc) freeze up along the way ?to Neels Gap?to Hiawassee?Franklin? That is to say can access to water be impaired or compromised?