|
|
|
|
In the photos above, the left photo shows the dam at White Cloud in 1984 taken from the old iron bridge that used to cross the Blue River here. The center image is a current picture looking upstream from the old dam. The rocks in the photo are the remains of the iron bridges support. The photo on the right shows the present remnants of the old dam here.
The Ecology class visited the White Cloud Dam monitoring site on three occasions: October 2, 9 and 16, 2001. The October 2nd sampling consisted of a full assessment of the health of the stream near the old dam area. The river on this date was slightly swollen from recent rains. On October 9, water samples upstream and downstream from the dam were taken for nitrate and phosphate analysis. On October 16, additional water samples were taken to include pH, alkalinity, hardness, conductivity, reactive phosphorus, nitrate, turbidity, conductivity and temperature.
The Indiana University Southeast Ecology class visited the White Cloud darter sampling site on Blue River on Thursday, October 2, 2001 at 2:00 PM EDT. This sampling period formed the basis of the site description given below.
White Cloud is a small village and recreational area located west of Corydon, IN, a short distance south of Highway 62. The weather conditions were partly cloudy, windy and warm (71 degrees F). The GPS computed latitude was 38° 13’ 42.0” and longitude W 86° 13’ 59”, elevation 448ft.
The site is at the end of Harrison Spring Road where a bridge crossed the stream until it was dismantled several years ago. The photograph below is a historic picture taken from the old bridge when White Cloud Dam was intact. It is to be noted that the canoe passage is located where the water historically flowed over the dam.
Rocks were removed from the dam to provide for canoe passage. This in turn produced a rather swift riffle where previous classes have found several darter species. The area above the dam is in the process of silt deposition, greatly reducing the depth of the mill pool.
White Cloud is within the eastern deciduous forest biome in the unglaciated, escarpment section of the Shawnee Hills Natural Region. Along the stream the main soil type is Haymond silt loam. The bedrock is composed of rocks originating from the middle and upper Mississippian periods.
Agricultural fields are the primary land use on the north side with a residential community of manufactured houses nearby. On the south side of the river, a steep tree covered riparian slope gives way to houses comprising the White Cloud community.
Along banks of the river we found a riparian community of young trees and mature sycamores with streamside rootwads, silver and sugar maple trees and a box elder.
An island located a short distance downstream contained a variety of vegetation. These included: sycamores, young weeping willow, tulip poplar, silver maple, black walnut, sumac, smartweed and wild cucumber vines.
Water willow plants line the shores in the late summer and fall. Dense understory vegetation was noted along both banks. Looking at the riverbanks we observed mild erosion from high water during flood times and debris high in the trees indicating old high water marks.
Downstream from the riffle, we found more large pool areas that were approximately 250 yards long and 5 to 6 feet in maximum depth. When the river begins to bend to the southwest, the water then becomes shallow and feeds into a long riffle. There is an overflow stream on the south side of the river where the water was channeled into a millrace. Now the area acts as an overflow area during periods of high water. Between the overflow channel and the main river channel is the island outwash area, approximately two acres in area.
Within the dry overflow stream with intermittent pools, several weathered mussel shells were observed including: pink ladyfingers, pink pimplebacks, fat pocketbooks, kidney shells, fluted mussels, female and male fat muckets and Asiatic clams. We also noted two small water snakes along the way.
The river width at the canoe passage in the dam was 56 feet. The average velocity at the dam was 5.9 ft/sec, and the discharge was calculated to be about 1650 CFS. The streambed was composed of boulders, cobble, gravel, sand, muck and silt. The substrate origin was limestone, moderate silt, and hardpan with moderate embeddedness. The available cover consisted of rootwads and water willow along the edges.
Using the Zippin method, we collected four species of darters, revealing a large number greenside darters. Incidental catch in the seine hauls included macroinvertebrates such as crayfish, water pennies, hellgrammites and stoneflies.
