Keller's Dry Creek in Winters, CA
As the name implies, Dry Creek is an ephemeral stream that drains out of the eastern edge of California's Coast Range into the Central Valley. When you actually stand in the bottom of this deeply-incised ,dried-up channel, flanked on one side by an orchard and the other-side by a sub-division, it is surprising to think that so much international debate grew out of a Masters student's Thesis on this little creek (Keller 1965). The creek is located in the town of Winters, a short drive from the University of California at Davis and immediately adjacent to Lake Berryessa. Dry Creek is the first major tributary downstream of the Lake Solano diversion dam on Putah Creek (part of the US Bureau of Reclamation Lake Berryessa and Solano Irrigation District). Keller's site is about 38 m above sea level and the highest peaks in the basin are roughly 670 m tall (well below the usual snow levels). The catchment is approximately 44 square kilometers, stretching about 14 km in length (Keller 1965). Dry Creek receives more than 90 percent of its 52 cm of annual precipitation between November and April.
Dry Creek in the summer (2003).

Vicinity Map:


The Dry Creek Catchment upstream of Keller's (1965) study site. Click here for Google Map of site.

STUDY SITE TOPO:


Keller's (1965) plane table topographic survey of the Dry Creek Channel. We digitized this into a DEM for use in the mesh discretization of the 2D and 3D CFD models.

Relevant References:

  • MacWilliams, M. L. Jr., Wheaton, J.M., Pasternack, G.B., Street, R. L. and Kitanidis, P. K. , 2006. Flow convergence and routing hypothesis for pool-riffle maintenance in alluvial rivers, Water Resources Research, 42, W10427.
     
  • Keller, E.A. and Florsheim, J.L., 1993. Velocity-Reversal Hypothesis: A Model Approach. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 18: 733-740.
  • Keller, E.A., 1971. Areal sorting of bed-load material: the hypothesis of velocity reversal. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 82: 753-756.
  • Keller, E.A., 1965. Form and Fluvial Processes of Dry Creek, Near Winters, California. Masters Thesis Thesis, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA, 73 pp.
 
 

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