Long-term Elwha River Temperature Monitoring Depends on Enduring Partnerships Text and photos by: Chelsea Behymer & Sarah Morley On a soggy Saturday morning in January, a group of Environmental Science and Civil Engineering undergraduate students from Seattle University are greeted by NOAA research ecologist Sarah Morley at the Olympic National Park boundary gate adjacent to the Elwha River. The parking lot where they are gathered is the furthest point that can be driven upriver since the Olympic Hot Springs access road began flooding in 2015 and eventually gave way to the river’s reclamation of its historic channels. From there, the …READ MORE
Category: From the Field
From the Field: A Day with the Wildlife Team
Text & photos by: Chelsea Behymer, Science Outreach Coordinator Wildlife camera images courtesy of: LEKT, NPS, USGS The novel and the rare are precious, invigorating things. During our lunch break, we savor the sunshine that envelops an emergent meadow on the floodplain of the Elwha River even more than our food on a crisp, clear Winter day. I’ve just helped Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe (LEKT) Natural Resources Department wildlife biologist Sara Cendejas-Zarelli install camera traps on a well-established American Beaver dam that her team had first observed the previous Summer. She had brought the extra cameras along as a potential …READ MORE
