Brush Brook Research Site, central Vermont

Brush Brook drains the western slopes of Camels Hump and Mt. Ethan Allen in the towns of Huntington and Duxbury, Vermont. The stream enters the Huntington River, which in turn empties into the Winooski River and then Lake Champlain. Two small watersheds have been studied beginning in the mid-1980’s. With the assistance of the USGS, V-notch weirs and flow monitoring were established in 2000 and 2001. Early work on flow paths (Ross et al. 1994) showed that the upper watershed (D) was dominated by soils with shallow depth to either dense basal till or bedrock, while the lower watershed (G) had relatively deep, unrestricted soils, fractured bedrock, and numerous seeps. These differences are reflected in the chemical and hydrological differences between the two streams. More recent work has focused on sources of nitrate in stream export (Hales et al. in press). [The figure shown is from that manuscript, drawn by Beverley Wemple of UVM's Geography Dept.]

Slide shows of the watershed:

Weir in the G watershed (sampling site 13)

Weir in the D watershed (sampling site 1)

Some views of Camels Hump

Hales, H.C., D.S. Ross and A. Lini. 2007. Isotopic signature of nitrate in two contrasting watersheds of Brush Brook, VT. Biogeochemistry: in press.

Ross, D.S., R.J. Bartlett, F.R. Magdoff, and G.J. Walsh. 1994. Flow path studies in forested watersheds of headwater tributaries of Brush Brook, Vermont. Water Resour. Res. 30:2611-2618.