Nathan Leber is all about finding the dirt on Lake Buchanan and other Texas reservoirs, or, more precisely, the dirt at the bottom.
Leber, manager of the TexMesoNet and Hydrosurvey programs for the Texas Water Development Board, is in charge of a crew that’s currently surveying sedimentation in Lake Buchanan.
Sedimentation surveys in Texas reservoirs help the state understand how water resources will look 50-100 years into the future.
“We provide the data; (state leaders) make the decisions,” Leber said.
It also helps water management organizations such as the Lower Colorado River Authority identify potential issues with sedimentation.
The survey crew uses a multi-frequency depth sounder to collect sedimentation thickness and location data from the lake. The data allows researchers to compare how much sediment has settled on the bottom of the lake since the reservoir’s impoundment.
Read more from Jared Fields with Daily Trib here.