y now those of you who adopted a beach to monitor last season have received a copy of our final report for the '96 season. Hopefully you saw the article in the most recent bqr that summarized results and showcased 3 of the 44 beaches guides monitored last year.
The photos shown here highlight the need to keep doing this program. Revised runoff forecasts in February caused the release of a constant 27,000 cfs for several weeks, followed by a constant 24,000 cfs for several more. A couple of guides took photos of our beaches during this time, which show the highly erosive effects of these flows...many of the high level beaches built by last year's experimental flood flow appear to be hit fairly hard.
People in the scientific community are very interested in our program and the unique information it provides.

You can sign up to photograph and monitor a beach this season by coming the GTS April 5-6 or calling the GCRG office. If you can't do the actual monitoring, you can greatly help out by donating $100 per beach to GCRG to help fund the program. (see space on membership form on last page pf this issue)
Adopt a Beach originated with the idea that the extensive on-the-ground experience of river guides can contribute to the scientific and monitoring work on the canyon's sand bars. As you may know, we selected 44 commonly used sand bar campsites in 3 critical reaches of the canyon where campsite beaches are scarce, highly eroded and/or highly visited. River guides photograph and monitor changes to these beaches, and answer questions like: how is this beach doing? is it bigger, smaller, wider, thicker? what processes seem to be changing it? how campable is it? It's a way of collectively keeping our finger on the pulse of a resource we care a lot about.
So, do it. Adopt a beach by calling us for a camera or sending us $100/beach to make this thing go. Thanks for your support!

Andre Potochnik,
Kate Thompson,
Kelly Burke
Tom Moody