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Free-Flowing River

As part of his wide-ranging study of the world’s rivers, WHOI scientist Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink took an expedition to British Columbia, Canada. Shown here is the Chilcotin River—one of the prime salmon spawning tributaries within the Fraser River basin—which joins the Fraser River from the Coast Range. During the spring, when this picture was taken, the Chilcotin flow is often high and the countryside green. During the summer and fall the same region is mostly dry grassland—Bighorn Sheep country. Peucker-Ehrenbrink and his colleagues have sampled the Chilcotin at this location at medium flow during the summer of 2009, low flow during late fall in 2010, and then again this spring during the freshet in an effort to track the export of carbon to the ocean via the world’s rivers.(Photo by Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)