Yes, a free day to kick back and relax. What do I do? Why, geology of course!

Back home in Southern California! I made fairly decent time, completing the trip in about 7 and a half hours. Though I also spent nearly $95 in gas. Ugh! I do have to say that iPod’s are the BEST invention ever for road trips though. On the way down, I blasted through 192 songs. Nice! Anyway, after spending 6 hours on the road, mainly driving through nothing but farm fields, the following view just makes me think, “almost home!” The Tehachapi Mountains are basically the border between Central California and Southern California, and when you see them towards the bottom of the San Joaquin Valley, there is still about 2 hours left before you’re home. Still, Southern California is almost within reach!

Of course, once you cross over the Tehachapis and San Gabriels, you *should* see the San Fernando Valley/LA. Instead, I saw:

Ah yes, smog! How I missed it. This view almost made me turn around and drive straight back to San Francisco! What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. Besides, during the last four months I’ve missed not having a fine coating of particulate matter all over my lungs.

After I got home, Nic, Nate and I went out to eat at TGI Friday’s to catch up on old times. We called Dan to see if he wanted to go, but he was sick. I’ve never been there, evidentially that is the happening spot for the college crowd in this area. The food is okay, but I can think of much better places to spend my time and money at.

I also have to say that I absolutely love craigslist.org. In the last 4 months, I have used it to buy a desk for my room, sell a guitar, find an apartment, find someone to sublet my room and now find a place to stay near UCLA. Starting Tuesday, I will be staying in an apartment with 4 ladies from UCLA during my internship, subletting while someone else is moving out during the summer. At $500/mo, it isn’t that bad of a deal, especially for being right across the street from UCLA.

I went down to check the place out last night and it was a nifty little apartment. It seems like a decent place to spend the next 11 weeks or so and a friendly group of people too. After this, I walked around campus for a bit to get my bearings. It is a very awesome campus, but I still think UC Berkeley is probably the most beautiful university I have ever seen. I walked through their massive geology building and found the office I am supposed to go to on Wednesday. Right down the hall is the office of Dr. Keilis-Borok, who’s team predicted the San Simeon earthquake and is predicting an earthquake this summer in So. Cal. Being the geeky person that I am, I kind of wanted to take a picture in front of his door. Ah well, maybe next time! =]

I. Introduction

The Zanja roughly translates to “ditch” in Spanish and was built in the early 1800’s by Native Americans, under the guidance of Spanish missionaries, to bring water to an outpost of Mission San Gabriel. [1]

My parents own a house along the Zanja in Mentone. Water flows at roughly bank full depth year round. The Zanja has been the subject of a number of lawsuits between various municipalities and the home owners who live along its banks. These lawsuits have focused on the issue of water rights since the county and various cities want to divert the flow of the Zanja and use it for drinking water, effectively cutting off the flow of the Zanja to the homeowners. A settlement was eventually reached in which both sides agreed not to use the water for drinking or irrigation, and the Zanja would continue to be allowed to flow through the private properties of homeowners who lived along its banks.

Many of these lawsuits happened when I was fairly young, so I don’t remember many details about them, or the studies both sides presented for their cases. Regardless of this, I was curious to see how much water flows through the Zanja. Was the amount of water that the cities wanted to get their hands on that significant? Thanks to reading the book Cadillac Desert and recently finishing a geomorphology class, my curiosity got the best of me. So I set out to find just how much water is flowing through the Zanja.

II. Methods

In order to determine the amount of water flowing through a given spot in the Zanja at any one second, I needed to find 3 variables: Depth (D), Width (W) and Water Velocity. The depth was easily determined by simply measuring across a specific spot, which we’ll call cross section ‘A’. Depth was determined by taking a series of 3 measurements across cross section ‘A’ and then averaging them. Velocity was probably the most difficult aspect. I measured the distance between two points along the bank and then threw a tennis ball in the water, recording the amount of time (T) it took for the ball to move between those two points (H). I repeated this process six times and then came up with the average time it took for the tennis ball to cover that distance.

Once I had the physical data, I did some calculations to come up with a cross sectional area of the water at that point (W x D_avg) as well as the Water Velocity (H/T). The calculations for cross section was in inches and I wanted feet. Since W x D_avg gives units in terms of square inches, I divided by 1 square foot (144 inches) to convert to square feet. Water Velocity was already measured in terms of feet per second, so no conversions were necessary.

III. Results

Legend:
D_avg = Average depth
W = Width of stream
H = Distance between two points along river
V_avg = Velocity of tennis ball averaged over 6 trials
A = Area of Cross Section ‘A’
Q_w = Amount of water discharge

D_avg = 6.3 inches
W = 89 inches
H = 7 feet
V_avg = .97 ft/sec
A = ( D_avg x W) = 561 sq. inches / 144 sq. inches = 3.9 sq. feet
Q_w = A x V_avg = 3.9 sq. feet x .97 feet per second = 3.8 cubic feet per second

IV. Discussion

My final result, after rounding to the correct amount of significant figures was 3.8 cubic feet per second. Comparing this to the discharge of many famous rivers, this amount is extraordinarily miniscule. The Mississippi River has an average discharge of 470,000 cubic feet per second. [2] The Santa Ana River, which flows to the west of the Zanja, and where much of its water ultimately ends up, has a mean annual discharge of 33.8 cubic feet per second. [3] For being one of the largest rivers in Southern California, this is a very small amount. Needless to say, we do live in a very arid environment.

Does enough water flow through the Zanja to justify local municipalities trying to take it? To simplify things when dealing with quantities of water, many organizations speak in terms of acre-feet. An acre-foot is the amount of water a family of four will need for one year. [4] According to Google, 1 acre-foot is equivalent to 43,560 cubic feet. Dividing this by 3.8 cubic feet per second, we find that it takes 11,463 seconds (or just over 3 hours) to fill the amount of space required by one acre-foot of water.

According to the 2000 census, the nearby city of Redlands has a population of 63,591 people. To simplify calculations, I divided by 4 to come up with the number of “families” who will be needing water, or the number of acre-feet that Redlands would need. Almost 16,000 acre-feet! Multiplying that by 3 hours per acre-foot, it would take nearly 5 and a half years to store enough water from the Zanja to supply the residential needs of Redlands for one year. As you can see, that in itself isn’t too practical. Not accounting for evaporation or infiltration, by itself the Zanja would be able to meet about 20% of the residential needs for the city of Redlands. This isn’t that much in the scheme of things and almost doesn’t justify the cost and effort that would be needed to bring the water into Redlands or any other city. However, in Southern California, water is nearly more valuable than gold.

V. Conclusions

My data should be taken with a grain of salt as most of the data is based on rough estimates and many assumptions. There are quite a few sources of error, such as average velocity. In most cases, you would measure velocity just below the surface, where water is flowing the fastest, as well as taking a variety of discharge measurements for multiple locations and averaging those to get an overall discharge for the river. My data represents the amount of discharge at a single spot on the Zanja and I would assume it is roughly average, based on my observations of the water level over the years. However, I have no data to quantify that.

Regardless of these issues, the amount of water flowing through the Zanja at any given moment is quite small. Given the scarcity of water in Southern California, the cost and consequences of removing the water from its “natural” channel to use for drinking water outweigh the cost of leaving the water in the channel for many to enjoy, as it runs through Redlands and many of its parks.

VI. References

[1] How big where their footprints? “Mission Era 1,” [online]:  [Accessed 30th May, 2004].

[2] LA Coast. “Mississippi River Delta Basin,” [online]: [Accessed 30th May, 2004].

[3] 1999 California Hydrologic Data Report. “11051500 SANTA ANA RIVER NEAR MENTONE, CA,” [online] [Accessed 30th May, 2004].

[4] National Resources Defense Council. “Drawdown – Groundwater Mining on Black Mesa,” [online] [Accessed 30th May, 2004].

Today (Yesterday) was my last day of classes this semester. It started off great. All I had to do was give a presentation in my paleontology on “Methane Driven Mass Extinctions – A Possible Cause for the Permian Extinction?” Class started at 8am. No problem with that. Except for the fact that I woke up at 9:45! Oh yes. I screamed, jumped out of bed, threw some clothes on and ran out the door. I got there right as the last presentation was going on. Luckily, my professor let me go after he was finished. How did that happen? Evidentially I set my alarm for 7PM instead of 7AM! That was nearly catastrophic.

My plan is to leave tomorrow at some point. Still have some stuff to take care of around town and need to finish packing up everything. Then I go to U-Haul to rent a truck and off I go! I should be back down in Redlands late tomorrow night. I’m not anticipating leaving here until nearly 12pm or 1. It’s about an 8 hour drive, so I should be in town by maybe 9:30 at the latest.

The last few days have been incredibly tedious, but it’s over! I found someone to sublet my room, finals are done, transportation back home seems to be arranged. I still need to get a place in Westwood, but I don’t have to worry about that until this weekend. Anyway, thanks to all the great people I’ve met up here in the past four months. Despite the stressful academic life, it has been an absolute blast.

I just got back home from my going-away/summer-is-here party I had with people from work. Not that many people there, but I was definitely happy with who showed up. It was quite a fun experience and we talked until quite late. It’s kind of a bummer to have to take off when I’m just starting to really get to know people. Ah well, in 3 more months I’ll be back and things can pick up where they left off. Anyway, to Emily, Harmony, Julie, Katherine and Ben, I thank you guys!

Interestingly enough, as I was riding the bus home tonight, this guys leans over and quietly says something to me. I didn’t understand, so I asked him, “what was that?” His response was:
I hope I see you again.

!!

So, it’s 2 o’clock in the morning, I’m on a crowded bus in the middle of San Francisco and a guy is hitting on me. What do I do? I turn and flash him a smile and say “thanks!” He tells me to have a goodnight and gets off the bus.

Luckily, this event was cancelled out by a beach bonfire we had last night for the geology crew. Lot’s of hot dogs and drinks were provided for this end of the year bash. Musical instruments were even brought! I brought my guitar and jammed with one of my professors. Part way through the night, two girls from another bonfire came up and wanted to kidnap me and take me back to their bonfire. That was… interesting.

Anyway, it’s quite late/early, so I think I should head off for now. Goodnight.

Well summer is almost upon us. You know what that means! Time to do away with the disheveled hair. My excuse for growing it out was basically because San Francisco is cold, and I need something to keep my head warm. In reality, I was just lazy and cheap! Anyway, here I am, all brand new and shiny! And a few pounds lighter now that all that hair is gone…

I’ve been taking a lot of pictures lately. Probably because I’m leaving for a few months and feeling like I’m already going to miss it up here. This is from Sunset Peak, which is basically our front yard. 🙂 Our house is the green house in the lower left hand corner by the tree. You can just barely make out the towers for the Golden Gate in the distance. Here is another from the peak, looking towards downtown San Francisco.

One final down, one to go. Plus two labs I need to finish (late), two projects for geomorphology I need to finish and a presentation on methane-driven extinctions. Ah yes, nothing like 7 days left in the semester and a workload equivalent to a whole quarter. This weekend is going to be hectic too! Last day of work tomorrow, geology bonfire at the beach on Friday night, and a going away party on Saturday night. Bring it on! I work best when under insane pressure anyway! (Though that probably isn’t a healthy thing at all!)

I forgot to mention in earlier posts, I finally sold my Epiphone Les Paul Gothic the other day. Nice to get that out of the way. Now I need to get rid of the Gretsch and all will be well.

This is my “I-Should-Be-Studying-But-I’m-Going-To-Do-Everything-Else-First” post. My room is always the cleanest when I have a project due or things to study for. A favorite quote I’ve seen on a Despair poster about procrastination: “Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.”

I’ve been getting quite a few emails lately about not buying gas on May 19th. I decided to visit a great site on the internet, entitled the Urban Legends Reference Pages to check this email out. I use it quite a bit and it is a great resource for anything that sounds too fishy (such as those “forward this to everyone you know and you will get $500 from Bill Gates!”). According to snopes, this May 19th “gas out” will have absolutely no effect. Basically what needs to happen is a boycott of larger proportions to send a message. As the snopes article states:

David and I were jamming together the other day as well. Whenever we hang out, I get so inspired to play and write more music. He just has this awesome energy about him. I’m so happy my sister found such a rad guy. I showed him the latest on the song I was working on awhile ago and he was really excited about it. Perhaps I can actually finish this thing and do a good job recording. Our friend Phil is in New York working on an audio recording internship, so when he gets back, I’ll have to see if he’ll want to help out. Maybe by then, this thing will be done!

In astronomy news, there is some pretty rad stuff happening soon. On June 8th, Venus will transit across the face of the sun. Unfortunately, us living on the west coast won’t be able to see it. Doh! Of course if you are super geeky like me, you simulate it using a program called Celestia.

On my way back home from school today, I looked up as I was opening the door and discovered we evidentially have a new roommate!

Also, courtesy of my awesome friend Harmony, I came across an interesting website that talks about a photographic interview. It sounds like fun and once I find some time, I am going to try it! Well enough with the massive link propagation! Talk to you soon.

Things are quickly winding down. I really can’t believe how fast the past four months have flown by. What a wild trip it’s been. In two weeks, I should be back down in Southern California for a day, then Dan and I are going to head up for a quick hiking trip into the Sierras. After that, if things work out properly, I come back down and move into a new apartment in Westwood for the next 3 months. This time, I’ll only be an hour and a half from home, which isn’t too bad.

I finally had the real 90-day review yesterday at work. It went completely awesome! I scored a 30 cent raise and they told me to definitely come back at the end of summer. How awesome that went! My last day of work is on Thursday. I’m gonna miss that group of people.

On Wednesday there was a university-wide walkout that was supposed to be statewide, protesting the Guvernator’s fiscal policies that relate to the Cal State system. Not sure how well it went at other colleges, but there was quite a bit of noise at this one. I didn’t participate though. Way too much to do with finals coming up. However, the situation is pretty dire. They are cutting the engineering and dance programs here. The school can’t even afford to print up schedules for the fall semester! Some of us are worried that geology might be next on the hit list since we’re a fairly small program, but apparently we actually bring in quite a bit of money to the school with research grants.

Went to the beach yesterday to do some homework and took some pictures. It’s so awesome since there is a dune right there at the edge of the beach and you can just sit up on it and have an excellent view of everything. I also figured out the mileage and it is exactly two miles from my house.

Looking north
Looking south

This was taken in the evening a few weekends ago. Check out the famous fog. Yes, basically a picture of nothing: Fog!

Stuff for the fall semester is coming together quickly. I had my advising appointment today and it looks like I will be able to take all the classes that I requested. However, it is going to be tough. Next fall will be nothing but geology classes: Stratigraphy, Structural Geology and Mineralogy. Between studying and field trips, that will leave little time to do anything else! However, I need all 3 of those classes to take the classes I want in Spring 2005. Ah!

The more I look at it though, the more I want to do my field camp in New Zealand during January 2006. What an unbelievable experience that would be! If I put my heart and mind towards nailing that goal, I’m positive I’ll find a way to go somehow. Hell, the last year is definitely evidence of this, as I have achieved all sorts of things that I really wanted. That tends to make one somewhat confident. 🙂

Tentative School schedule for the next few years:

*Plus a few GE’s and electives that I will have to throw around in certain area. ALMOST DONE THOUGH!!!

Brandy is definitely coming up to visit this weekend, so that will be fun to hang with her as well. In anticipation of this, I need to finish my paleontology paper tomorrow! We’ll see how far I can get. I’ll also need to turn in my two-weeks notice at work tomorrow too. I’m going to miss that group so much. These are some of the most friendly and awesome people I have ever had the fortune of working with in my life. I hope they let me back in when I return at the end of the summer.