Wednesday, April 8, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
21
Girls tennis Fresh water, glacial melt pouring into Gulf of Alaska
falls to
Bend High
By david Stauth
Correspondent
By rongi Yost
Correspondent
The girls tennis team was
only able to take 10 of their
20 players to the match at
Bend High, due to many
girls being out of town for
spring break. Sisters put up
a good fight, but lost the
match 4-3.
Brenna Weems, who usu-
ally plays at No. 1 doubles,
played at No. 1 singles, since
her partner was out of town.
Weems came out on top with
a 6-2, 6-4 win over Janea
Schaumloeffel.
“Singles and doubles are
such different games, and
Brenna adjusted beautifully,”
stated Coach Susan Fullhart.
“As usual, her serve came
through for her, but what
really impressed me was her
consistency and movement.”
Chawnie Craig, who’d
never played a singles match
before, won a marathon 6-4,
7-5 nail-biter against Hallie
Beaver in No. 3 singles.
“Chawnie demonstrates
what happens when you put
a tennis racket in the hands
of a really good athlete,” said
Fullhart. “She is so fast, and
got everything back to claim
the victory.”
Sisters also came out on
top at No. 2 doubles. Alana
Lukens and Kenna Cardin
had no mercy, and defeated
Anjali Copra and Kaitlyn
Mattson 6-0, 6-1.
“Kenna did an excellent
job of seeing the court, and
putting the ball in the right
place,” said Fullhart. “That’s
paramount in doubles. Alana
did an excellent job of finish-
ing points.”
The Lady Outlaws were to
play Klamath Union at home
on Tuesday, April 7.
CORVALLIS – Incessant
mountain rain, snow, and
melting glaciers in a compar-
atively small region of land
that hugs the southern Alaska
coast and empties fresh
water into the Gulf of Alaska
would create the sixth largest
coastal river in the world if it
emerged as a single stream, a
recent study shows.
Since it’s broken into liter-
ally thousands of small drain-
ages pouring off mountains
that rise quickly from sea
level over a short distance,
the totality of this runoff has
received less attention, scien-
tists say. But research that’s
more precise than ever before
is making clear the magnitude
and importance of the runoff,
which can affect everything
from marine life to global sea
level.
The collective fresh-water
discharge of this region is
more than four times greater
than the mighty Yukon River
of Alaska and Canada, and
half again as much as the
Mississippi River, which
drains all or part of 31 states
and a land mass more than six
times as large.
“Freshwater runoff of
this magnitude can influ-
ence marine biology, near-
shore oceanographic studies
of temperature and salinity,
ocean currents, sea level and
other issues,” said David Hill,
lead author of the research
and an associate professor in
the College of Engineering at
Oregon State University.
“This is an area of con-
siderable interest, with its
many retreating glaciers,”
Hill added, “and with this
data as a baseline we’ll now
be able to better monitor how
it changes in the future.”
The findings were
reported in the Journal of
G eo p h ys i ca l Res ea rch :
Oceans, by Hill and Anthony
Arendt at the University of
Alaska-Fairbanks. It was sup-
ported by the North Pacific
Research Board.
This is one of the first
studies to accurately docu-
ment the amount of water
being contributed by melt-
ing glaciers, which add about
57 cubic kilometers of water
a year to the estimated 792
cubic kilometers produced by
annual precipitation in this
region. The combination of
glacial melt and precipitation
produce an amount of water
that’s larger than many of
the world’s great rivers, such
as the Ganges, Nile, Volga,
Niger, Columbia, Danube or
Yellow River.
“By combining satel-
lite technology with on-the-
ground hydraulic measure-
ments and modeling, we’re
able to develop much more
precise information over a
wider area than ever before
possible,” Hill said.
The data were acquired
as an average of precipita-
tion, glacial melting and run-
off over a six-year period,
from 2003 to 2009. Knocked
down in many places by steep
mountains, the extraordinary
precipitation that sets the
stage for this runoff aver-
ages about 6 feet per year for
the entire area, Hill said, and
more than 30 feet in some
areas.
The study does not pre-
dict future trends in runoff,
Hill said. Global warming is
expected in the future, but
precipitation predictions are
more variable. Glacial melt
is also a variable. A warmer
climate would at first be
expected to speed the retreat
of existing glaciers, but the
amount of water produced
at some point may decrease
as the glaciers dwindle or
disappear.
Additional precision in
this study was provided by
NASA’s Gravity Recovery
and Climate Experiment, or
GRACE satellites, which can
make detailed measurements
of gravity and, as one result,
estimate the mass of glaciers
they are flying over. As the
glacial mass decreases over
time, the amount of melted
water that was produced can
be calculated.
The close agreement of
land-based measurements
also help confirm the accu-
racy of those made from
space, a point that will be
important for better global
understanding of water
stored in a high-altitude
environment.
Some of the processes at
work are vividly illustrated
at Glacier Bay National Park,
where some of the most rap-
idly retreating glaciers in the
world are visited each year
by hundreds of thousands
of tourists, many on cruise
ships.
Meeting with veterans...
photo by Cole davis
rep. Greg Walden stopped in Sisters last week and enjoyed a lunch break with Sisters Band of Brothers.
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