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Sugar Creek Watershed Study  - Blue Creek

USGS Gage 07311200 - Blue Beaver Creek near Cache, Oklahoma

On October 31, 1996, The Team went out to the gage site and surveyed one cross section, approximately 290 feet downstream from Old Highway 62 (Cache Road) and USGS gage 07311200. The survey party also profiled 446 feet downstream from the bridge and tied elevations back to gage elevations. The cross section, located downstream from the bridge, is in a reach that splits around a sand/gravel bar with various piles of woody debris. Bed material sizes in this reach consist of sands, gravels, and cobbles. Bankfull top width is over twice as wide as expected, while mean depth was about half as deep. This cross section is not representative of proper bankfull geometric relations for a stable channel draining approximately (~) 25 square miles. On June 24, 1997, The Team revisited the site and profiled 1900 feet downstream from the gage and surveyed one cross section 1668 feet downstream from the bridge and gage, in a uniform reach. Bed material sizes consist mainly of sands and cobbles (gravels are covered up). Bankfull cross section properties fall more in-line with other gage sites visited. The two cross sections surveyed are plotted in the graphic below.

Blue Beaver Creek near Cache, OK- Survey Results
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Blue Beaver Creek near Cache is a hydrologic benchmark station. The US Geological Survey have recorded flows on Blue Beaver Creek near Cache, since July, 1964. There appears a uniform correspondence between peak discharge and gage height from Water Year 1965 to 1976. In 1977 the largest recorded discharge for thirty two years changed the channel and the rating curve; In 1981, a 582 cubic feet per second (cfs) peak discharge was recorded at a gage height 0.92 feet higher than a 1976 peak discharge of 588 cfs; In 1991, a 1200 cfs peak discharge was recorded at a gage height of 10.86, 0.66 feet higher than a 1975 peak discharge of 1280 cfs. Out of thirty years of data, twenty peak gage heights are higher than 10.75 feet on the gage and ten peaks are 10.55 feet or lower. This is interesting because in 1997, the USGS published Water-Resources Investigations Report (WRIR) 97-4202 Techniques For Estimating Peak Streamflow Frequency For Unregulated Streams and Streams Regulated By Small Floodwater Retarding Structures In Oklahoma. Peak-streamflow frequency estimates are given for Blue Beaver Creek near Cache. The 1.5 year discharge was extrapolated from a linear plot of the 2-yr, 5-yr, 10-yr, 25-yr, 50-yr and 100-yr discharges on a logrithmic probability graph. The 1.5-yr discharge, (66.67% probability of exceedance) is approximately 1150 cubic feet per second (CFS). According to Rating Table #4 (Last Corrected 4/28/92), 1150 cfs corresponds to a gage height of 10.79 feet. Is it coincidence that the estimated 1.5 year discharge, that on the average is exceeded twice in three years also corresponds to a gage height that has been exceeded twenty out of thirty years?

Blue Beaver Creek near Cache, OK- Survey Results
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Blue Beaver Creek near Cache, OK- Survey Results
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Assumptions about the Channel Survey

A long pool extended upstream from the bridge and gage location. We decided to profile downstream, hoping to get away from the bridge scour effects. The profile survey captured the last 250 feet of the pool under the bridge, a riffle section 211 feet in length, a pooled section 472 feet in length, a riffle section 242 feet long, and 825 feet of a pooled section that extended farther downstream to a sand bar near the piers for a railroad bridge. Bankfull Indicators were surveyed in with the channel bed profile and are shown in the graphic below. Generally, our estimation of bankfull elevations are low, probably due to trying to estimate bankfull elevations in pooled sections. The main reason we surveyed across the channel in a pooled section was due to the uniformity in width of a long straight reach with well established floodplains.

Blue Beaver Creek near Cache, OK- Survey Results
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Bankfull discharge was backed into, taking into account, the cross sectional area of the bankfull indicators, the 1.5 year probable discharge, the bankfull slope, and reasonable roughness coefficients for a C5 Rosgen type stream channel. Using a USGS rating curve, a overall energy slope of 0.0037 ft/ft and a Manning's n of 0.032, the computed discharge for bankfull is approximately 1056 CFS, which has a probability of exceedance of 1.43 years.

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