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Tanana River Field Work

Tanana River and the Alaska Range

Yesterday I had the opportunity to join our office's hydrologist Ed on some field work southeast of Fairbanks on the Alaska Highway. It has been some time since I had traveled to the area and the weather could not have been much better for our journey there.

Tetlin Bridge near Tok

Starting just east of Tok, about 200 miles from Fairbanks, and working our way back, we checked on and surveyed a few different river gauges on the Tanana River. The nearly 600 mile long Tanana is an important tributary to the Yukon River, and monitoring the river level is essential to forecasting and monitoring flooding in much of Interior Alaska. Accurate surveying ensures river level measurements taken at the site can be consistently related to river discharge.

• posted September 16, 2009