Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest daily average streamflow data: 1992-2001

This data publication contains daily average streamflow from October 1992 through September 2001 for 11 stream gauging stations located on the Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest (TCEF) which is located in the Little Belt Mountains of Central Montana, USA. Streamflow was measured at two locations on Tenderfoot Creek (Upper and Lower) as well as seven subwatersheds. Gauging stations on the subwatersheds were Sun, Upper Sun, Spring Park, Bubbling, Stringer, Upper Stringer, Pack, Passionate, and Lonesome Creeks. Two of these subwatersheds (Sun and Spring Park) had experimental harvesting in 1999 and 2000. Half of those cutting units were burned under prescription between 2001 and 2003. Two adjacent subwatersheds (Bubbling and Stringer) serve as controls for the silvicultural treatments (Hood et. al. 2012, McCaughey et. al. 2006).
The Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest (TCEF) was established in 1961 as an experimental watershed in representative lodgepole pine forest common east of the Continental Divide. The mission of this Experimental Forest was to develop “management techniques through research of how to harvest lodgepole pine timber while maintaining soil stability, and improving water yields without aggravating snowmelt and summer storm peaks and sediment production” (Establishment report for the Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest 1961). In the early 1990s, a new objective was outlined to develop and evaluate methods for sustaining the productivity and biodiversity of multi-aged east-side lodgepole pine communities. At that time, efforts to establish baseline data in several disciplines including hydrology, precipitation, snow deposition, surface fuel loading and forest ecology. Hydrologic and climatologic sites were established to monitor environmental effects of various silvicultural methods used to restore and regenerate multi-aged lodgepole pine forests.