The Truckee River is the thread that weaves through the entire fabric of life for hundreds of thousands of people who live between Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake. Its waters are used for drinking, agriculture and recreation and are home to all kinds of species of the non-human kind.
"It's a complicated system," says Laurel Saito, assistant professor of natural resources and environmental science. "It's not in its natural state. It's in a degraded state in some places. I would definitely like to see the river ecology and hydrology improved. I don't think it's a lost cause."
Saito and her students regularly sample the river at various sites.
"We're trying to understand the food web and the dynamics of the river: who is eating what, what species are there, and how the food web is different along different reaches of the river."
She does that by a technique known as stable isotope analysis.
"Every living thing has these isotopes in them," she says. "They're naturally occurring, not the radioactive kind. Living things get them mostly from what they eat."
By analyzing these isotopes in fish and insects, for example, Saito is able to figure out who is eating what along the river's food web.
"This will help us understand what kinds of things are happening in the river and how that might be influencing which species are there and which are not," she says. "Knowing what's going on in the food web will help us understand more about the sustainability of species in the river."
That's useful information for managers, especially when combined with water quality modeling being done by Saito's graduate students.
"These models are really good at telling you how management changes affect the water quality," she says. "However, they're not really tied to the food web. We're hoping to eventually tie water quality modeling to the food web models we are building on the Truckee River and eventually be able to make predictions about what will happen with food web dynamics."
That should be good news to the river's managers, who need accurate data to inform their decisions.
"There's a big interest in the community in developing a sustainable Truckee River – a river that has a lot of different uses, but a healthy river," Saito says. "Hopefully, we will be able to help the decision-makers figure out which of their options will be best for meeting their needs, but also meet the needs of a sustainable river. That's our long-term goal."