![\"UNR](\"https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Blaszczak_DV_Dre_Nov2024_ForWeb.jpg\")
UNR graduate student Deandre Presswood carrying out the Blaszczak Lab s::can spectrolyser from an upper watershed location at the end of the 2024 field season. While the outlet of the watershed is monitored year-round, many upper watershed locations are inaccessible during the middle of the winter. (Credit: Joanna Blaszczak).<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Blaszczak\u2019s lab is part of the QuEST Project<\/a>, a nationwide network of researchers seeking to understand and predict biogeochemical changes in watersheds as their streams expand and contract.<\/p>\n The Dog Valley watershed is unique, however, being a high-altitude, snow-melt-dominated system in an arid region of the country. Therefore, Blaszczak is investigating how snowpack variability impacts the extent and water quality conditions of the downstream network.<\/p>\n When snow melts high in the mountains, Dog Creek and the other tributaries that run through Dog Valley flow with vigor. By the end of summer, however, she explains that most of the watershed has run dry, save for the mainstem of the creek and a few springs higher up in the mountains.<\/p>\n Therefore, part of her project examines how changes in discharge driven by snowmelt change downstream water quality within the watershed and at its outlet. However, in her study of Dog Valley, Blaszczak has noticed something else that could be influencing the biogeochemistry of the system.<\/p>\n To monitor changes in flow through one of the headwater streams of Dog Creek, a Solinst Levelogger has been deployed on a stable fence post in white PVC housing. The pressure measurements from the logger are paired with direct measurements of stream discharge to create a rating curve. (Credit: Joanna Blaszczak).<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Despite the heavy topographic relief within the watershed, Dog Creek encounters a stretch of flat land within the valley in the form of an idyllic meadow.<\/p>\n \u201cDog Valley, like a lot of Sierra Nevada watersheds, has a meadow partway through its watershed,\u201d Blaszczak explains. \u201cAnd what we’ve noticed is that the meadow is a biogeochemical hot spot.\u201d<\/p>\n This means that her QuEST project can\u2019t rely solely on snowmelt and discharge measurements to estimate how water quality changes in the watershed. Although these factors drive the stream networks’ expansion and contraction, chemical fluxes in Dog Creek may have less to do with stream connectivity and more to do with the local, organic matter-rich pockets it flows through.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of our theory was that some of the controls on water chemistry are based on how much of the upstream network is connected, where the sources are,\u201d Blaszczak says, referring to the springs and snowmelt on Crystal Peak and other mountains. \u201cBut part of it also could be local conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Therefore, Blaszczak\u2019s project with Presswood is expansive, covering the watershed from mountain peak to meadow, gathering holistic baseline data on everything from snow height to dissolved oxygen.<\/p>\n Joanna Blaszczak (left), UNR undergraduate student Donovan Davis (center left), UNR graduate student Deandre <\/span>Presswood (standing right), and UNR undergraduate student Lea Wigington (sitting right) maintaining one of the Blaszczak Lab\u2019s s::can spectrolysers at a Dog Creek mainstem site. (Credit: Joanna Blaszczak).<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n In a watershed so complex yet underresearched, Blaszczak\u2019s sensor setup and study sites cover a lot of ground. Similar to other QuEST projects, she has three nested sensor sites on Dog Creek and 20 tributary sites within the watershed where she and her students collect grab samples.<\/p>\n Blaszczak\u2019s upstream sensor site is located at a mountain spring above the meadow, where it flows even when many other tributaries run dry. Her middle sensor is located on the main stem of the creek near the end of the meadow, and her final site is placed at the outlet of the whole watershed, right where Dog Creek enters the Truckee River.<\/p>\n \u201cThe point of that was to basically capture the evolution of chemistry as moving from high elevation, sort of last-to-melt-out snow sites, all the way down through this meadow, [and] all the way down to the catchment\u2019s outlet,\u201d Blaszczak says.<\/p>\n Therefore, the sensor sites can capture how water quality changes from headwater to outlet. All three are equipped with UV-VIS s::can spectrolysers to measure stream chemistry at high frequencies (i.e., every 15 minutes).<\/p>\n Blaszczak and her students also take grab samples, which are sent to QuEST partners at the University of New Hampshire, to understand where chemical fluxes are arising. Even during the dry season, they will trek up the valley to check on tributaries, simply taking pictures and noting the absence of flow when they\u2019re dried up.<\/p>\n UNR graduate student Deandre Presswood holding a s::can spectrolyser in Dog Creek while ensuring it is working properly during a routine maintenance visit. (Credit: Deandre Presswood).<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n In addition to their traditional sensor setup, Blaszczak and Presswood are working to better characterize snowmelt throughout the watershed. At several sites in the valley this upcoming winter, Presswood and others in the Blaszczak lab will dig snow pits to measure snowpack height, and then monitor cameras to track the total snowfall all winter.<\/p>\n Then, when the snow begins melting, she has the equipment to estimate discharge rates. Her lab has placed ten Solinst Leveloggers<\/a> to measure water level and two Solinst Barologgers<\/a> at the lowest and highest elevation sites to measure atmospheric pressure among the Dog Creek tributaries.<\/p>\n She explains that these loggers help her build discharge rating curves, which she can calibrate and use to predict discharge rates across the watershed, even at tributaries without equipment.<\/p>\n Further down the valley, the meadow continues churning out biological processes in its organic-matter-rich environment. To understand how much biological activity is actually occurring in the meadow, and therefore estimate if it’s contributing to chemical fluxes downstream, she uses PME miniDOT Dissolved Oxygen Loggers<\/a> alongside the level logger locations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can see how much of the variance in the water chemistry we can predict by having that additional understanding of biological activity, with dissolved oxygen as a proxy,\u201d Blaszczak explains.<\/p>\n Overall, she is taking snapshots of watershed chemistry throughout the entire year. Then, by measuring snowpack, stream discharge, and biological activity, Blaszczak hopes to understand the forces driving chemical changes in the non-perennial watershed.<\/p>\n \u201cGetting really high-resolution data within a catchment that doesn’t have a ton of infrastructure is a big challenge, and so we’re trying to make those initial steps,\u201d Blaszczak says. \u201cYou can’t just collect the chemistry data. You have to know about a lot of different sources, a lot of inputs, both hydrologic and chemical.\u201d<\/p>\n UNR graduate student Deandre <\/span>Presswood maintaining a Solinst Levelogger at a headwater stream in the Dog Creek watershed during peak spring snowmelt and runoff. (Credit: Deandre <\/span>Presswood).<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n The QuEST Project has provided Blaszczak an opportunity to not only conduct an in-depth watershed research project, but also conduct it somewhere that\u2019s rarely been studied before.<\/p>\n Non-perennial streams are historically underresearched and underappreciated, according to Blaszczak. In fact, they aren\u2019t protected under the Clean Water Act because they don\u2019t flow throughout the entire year.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if a stream is dry part of the year, it doesn’t mean that it’s not really important for biogeochemistry,\u201d she says. \u201c[\u2026] so they definitely deserve protection.\u201d<\/p>\n However, they are increasingly being recognized as important parts of their ecosystem<\/a>, which is one of the reasons the QuEST project was formed. The project is funded by the Department of Energy\u2019s EPSCoR Grant<\/a>, which offers funding for states with low federal research funding.<\/p>\n Nevada is one of these states, and pales in comparison to its neighbor, California, in terms of research. Blaszczak says that the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which drains into the Great Basin, is much less researched, something she hopes to change.<\/p>\n Blaszczak further explains that snow-melt-dominated watersheds like Dog Valley are already unpredictable, and being on the edge of an arid region that\u2019s already facing water problems means that understanding the system is even more important.<\/p>\n \u201cOur climate is becoming more variable through time, and so you can’t predict when years are going to be more crazy than others, because it’s so variable,\u201d Blaszczak says.<\/p>\n A picture of the Dog Valley meadow and the mountains on the western edge of the watershed at a crossing over the mainstem of Dog Creek in April 2025. (Credit: Joanna Blaszczak).<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n She explains that monitoring infrastructure needs to be in place and recording baseline watershed conditions before water quality predictions can be made. Yet, with a better picture of how places like Dog Valley act throughout the year, whether they are \u201ccrazy\u201d or normal, researchers and managers can be better prepared for the future.<\/p>\n Luckily, the QuEST Project has allowed Blaszczak to create this baseline monitoring. Covering an entire watershed across thousands of feet in elevation change is difficult, but she is confident in the system of sensors\u2019 ability to help her track the changes that are inevitably coursing through the watershed.<\/p>\n \u201cI love working with high-frequency sensors, especially in the water, because it’s showing you things that you can’t see with your own eyes,\u201d Blaszczak says.<\/p>\n The QuEST Project is still less than two years off the ground, and its database is still being built up, but it finds itself at the forefront of an important area of watershed research. Working to piece together the mechanics of underresearched stream networks in underresearched states is a challenge, but one that Blaszczak and her colleagues are tackling head-on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A snowflake swirls high in the atmosphere, whisked across the winter sky before landing on Crystal Peak in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. It sits on this peak until the spring, when temperatures warm and the snowmelt starts to flow into the nearby Dog Valley. Surging down the slope, the water molecule now drains into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":40536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,8,49,510],"tags":[2748,2755,2753,2752,2749,2747,2745,1258,2756,2751,2746,2127,2750,2754,202,503,2743,2744],"class_list":["post-40534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-articles","category-news","category-newsfeed","category-rivers-streams","category-water-quality","tag-biogeochemical","tag-crystal-peak","tag-dog-creek","tag-dog-valley","tag-meadow","tag-mountain","tag-nevada","tag-organic-matter","tag-quest-project","tag-sensor-system","tag-sierra-nevada-mountains","tag-snowmelt","tag-stream-network","tag-truckee-river","tag-university-of-nevada","tag-water-quality","tag-watershed-network","tag-watershed-scale"],"remote_post_permalink":false,"remote_post_featured_image":false,"yoast_head":"\nWhat\u2019s Driving the Watershed Chemistry?<\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"To](\"https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Blaszczak_DV_LL_April2025_ForWeb.jpg\")
![\"Joanna](\"https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Blaszczak_DVMS1_April2025_ForWeb.jpg\")
Working with Sensors and Grab Sample Sites Across the Valley<\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"UNR](\"https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Blaszczak_IMG_2075_ForWeb.png\")
![\"UNR](\"https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Blaszczak_IMG_1261_ForWeb.png\")
The Beginning of a Water Quality Monitoring Network in Dog Valley<\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Blaszczak_DV_April2025-1_ForWeb.jpg\")