The body of research and studies generated on the Fryingpan River between the 1940s and the present supports the development of a conceptual model of ecosystem responses to hydrological regime behavior and streamflow management activities. This conceptual model should encourage conversations about system behavior and collective understanding among stakeholders regarding connections between specific hydrological regime characteristics affected by management of Ruedi Reservoir and the ecological or biological variables important to local communities. For the sake of simplicity, the model includes mostly unidirectional relationships—feedback loops are exploded to reveal intermediate connections between variables. This approach increases the number of variables represented in the system, perhaps increasing its complexity at first glance. However, the primary benefit to the end user is that the model becomes more readable and explicit in its representation of system behavior.
The conceptual model presented here likely differs by degrees from those held by the various investigators who considered Fryingpan River processes over the previous 80 years. However, it affectively aggregates the ideas main presented by each of those individuals. This model focuses on hydrological and biological variables and does not incorporate the entire diversity of human uses and needs for water from the Fryingpan River (e.g. hydropower production for the City of Aspen, revenue generated in the Town of Basalt by angling activities, etc.). Rather it attempts to illustrate how the conditional state of important ecosystem characteristics might respond to reservoir management activities that impact typical spring flows, peak flow timing and magnitude, summer flows, fall flows, and winter flows.
