Water Quantity Monitoring on the Madison River Watershed

We are excited to announce that YERC will be expanding our monitoring network for RiverNET to include tributaries in the Madison River Watershed. We are working to install water quantity sensor stations on key tributaries between Ennis Lake and Hebgen Lake. Our goal with these stations is to fill gaps in existing data sets and provide data for critical conservation projects throughout the watershed. We have selected locations based on expert input from other conservation groups and agencies in the area. These sensor stations will utilize the same Onset MX2001 Bluetooth-enabled data loggers that we use in Paradise Valley. These sensors will automatically record temperature and stage (depth) on the tributaries where they are installed. We can then easily access this data with any Bluetooth enabled smart device by pairing the device to the sensor when nearby and using Onset’s mobile application to download the data. Once we have access to this data, we can use the stage measurements to determine the discharge or flow in each stream. We can do this using an empirical relationship between stage and discharge known as a “rating curve.” Rating curves are specific to each stream and must be developed through manual measurements.