A short post but here are a few pictures from an exciting project I'm working on with my graduate student Robert Leeper and Environmental Sciences colleague Andy Gray. We are working with the City of Glendora, LA Department of Public Works and the US Forest Service to monitor changes to the catchments draining into Glendora. The catchments completely burned in 2014 without a significant rain since, with the result that the hillside are coated in loose material ready to turn into landslides and debris flows. This huge amount of sediment could overwhelm the debris catch basin below and head down city streets. We've been spending the last couple months setting up monitoring equipment prior to the approaching historic El Nino. We should observe some pretty big changes and hopefully learn a lot about debris flow generation and transport. This will be an exciting project in a couple months time. I'll keep you posted!
Terrestrial LiDAR scan to examine a channel reach prior to rain events. We will be able to detect mm-scale changes in the landscape (and will likely notice significantly bigger ones!).
Robert programming a pressure transducer which is drilled into the bedrock channel and can record the timing and volume of debris material and floods which override it.
Andy and Robert installing one of several rain gauges we have monitoring the area.
