A River at Risk
The Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming is vast — spanning 2.2 million acres, it is one-third the size of New Hampshire. It contains river canyons and glaciers, mountains and plains, and a complex political, natural, and environmental history. In partnership with the Wind River tribes, Teresa Cohn and Iva Moss-Redman in the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture are working with Wind River communities to assess damaged river systems to determine what might be remediated.
The Wind River is the lifeblood of the reservation, connecting headwaters to canyons, providing water to communities, and supporting the wild lands and wildlife for which the area is known. Initially dammed about 100 years ago, the river and its adjacent ecosystem have undergone significant changes that have affected life in the area, but they have been difficult to quantify and analyze in the years since. Moving forward, a healthy river system is essential to the continuation of indigenous life ways.
“We’re looking at the needs that the Wind River tribes have,” says Moss-Redman, a research scientist in Cohn’s lab and a member of the Northern Arapaho tribe who also teaches on the reservation. “Once we clearly identify those needs, the team at UNH will be able to respond to them.”
Riparian change
Cohn, an associate professor in the UNH department of natural resources and the environment, leads a long-term collaborative research project investigating changes along the banks and on the land near the Wind River, known as the riparian zone. In the arid climate — the area averages less than 10 inches of rain per year — the riverside vegetation and animal life play vital roles in the local environment.
Cottonwood species are foundational in this environment, stabilizing banks, regulating water temperatures, and providing food and nesting habitats for wildlife, but they are in decline. Characterizing and quantifying these and other riparian changes provides important insights for how they impact the tribes and the cultures that developed in concert with now-shifting natural conditions. Historically, data from aerial photographic surveys provided low-resolution comparisons of vegetation abundance at different time points but lacked species-specificity. Assisted by UNH colleague Ben Fraser’s GIS/GPS expertise, the team carried out a baseline vegetation characterization last year.
“We’ve had a lot of back-and-forth with the tribes over the past year and a half, looking at what’s going on with their riparian food webs,” says Cohn. “That way we can better understand what changes are most significant.”
Moss-Redman has a doctorate in Indigenous Knowledge Systems and incorporates the studies being done on the reservation into her science curriculum in Wind River schools. Research to assess wildlife along the river, with nearly 200,000 trail camera photos documenting the variety of animal life in the area over the last few years, has provided students with a compelling topic. The students learn about indigenous research methods, develop their own research questions and plans, and analyze data generated by the research being done.
“Indigenous research methods are helping the students access their knowledge systems from either the Arapaho or Shoshone tribe to help them understand how relationships, respect, reciprocity, and responsibility are applied during a research project,” says Moss-Redman.
Nell Davis, a graduate student and teaching assistant in the department of natural resources and the environment, is another member of the team studying the river system. She is looking at the geological foundation of the floodplain and cottonwood ecosystem and how that can affect future management strategies.
“I’m talking with people in the area and working to connect our findings with their lives,” says Davis. “This includes thinking about how our results could be integrated into land-based lessons that teach students about connections between wildlife, geologic features, and the changing river.”
Other changes are coming to the river system that will require additional responses and adaptation. The large glaciers in the Wind River Mountain Range are retreating and will provide less meltwater to the river system over time. And more volatile weather patterns are yielding highly variable snowpack depths year to year in the mountains, potentially further reducing the meltwater supply during many spring thaws.
“In an arid climate, less meltwater can have a profound effect on the riparian environment,” says Cohn.
An invisible hazard
The Wind River system is also being affected in another way. An outside mining firm processed uranium on the reservation in the 1950s and early 1960s, producing a substantial amount of uranium supply for the United States during the Cold War era. The operation was shut down in 1963, but the site was not remediated at the time, with 1.8 million cubic yards of dangerous material, known as tailings, left in the open for more than 20 years.
Contamination has since been found in the groundwater, making many wells toxic, and is now beginning to enter the river water as well. While investigations have detected contamination in crayfish, the Tribes are interested in better understanding how the uranium may be moving through riparian food webs.
“The Wind River tribes have a strong interest in maintaining indigenous ways of working with the land and ways of life in general,” says Cohn. “Part of that is learning about the conditions they have now, including the contamination, and working to track and monitor them. The team at UNH is fortunate to be able to contribute to these efforts.”