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This book examines one of the most important and complex of the world's tropical rainforest regions: the greater Panama Canal Watershed. The Rio Chagres is the primary water source for operating the Canal, and supplies potable water for municipal use and electricity generation, but science has left this important national resource largely unstudied. The text promotes understanding of the physical and ecological components of an isolated and largely pristine tropical rainforest.
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THE RÍO CHAGRES, PANAMA Water Science and Technology Library VOLUME 52 Editor-in-Chief V. P. Singh, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, U.S.A. Editorial Advisory Board M. Anderson, Bristol, U.K. L. Bengtsson, Lund, Sweden J. F. Cruise, Huntsville, U.S.A. U. C. Kothyari, Roorkee, India S. E. Serrano, Philadelphia, U.S.A. D. Stephenson, Johannesburg, South Africa W. G. Strupczewski, Warsaw, Poland The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. THE RÍO CHAGRES, PANAMA A Multidisciplinary Profile of a Tropical Watershed edited by RUSSELL S. HARMON Army Research Office, Research Triangle Park, NC, U.S.A. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN-10 1-4020-3298-6 (HB) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-3298-1 (HB) ISBN-10 1-4020-3297-8 (e-book) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-3297-4 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springeronline.com Cover illustration: Dry season flow in the upper Rio Chagres above the reach known as 'Three Falls', taken at a point (9:17:26N, 79:27:02W) looking downstream towards the first fall, which is about 2m in height. A scale is provided by the person on the right bank of the river with a surveying instrument. A mixed lithology boulder bar extends into the river from the right side of the picture. The bedrock outcrops are altered andesite. The river valley is typically bank full during the wet season. Annual high water marks are indicated by the location of significant bankside vegetation above the current water level. Photograph by Fred Ogden (U. Connecticut). Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2005 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed in the Netherlands. Dedication This book is dedicated to Lance Vander Zyl, Eric Nicoliasen, and Thomas Exenberger colleagues and friends without whose dedicated support the upper Río Chagres basin fieldwork of 2002, which provided the foundation for much of the research described in this volume, would not have been possible. Contents Dedication v Contributing Authors xi Preface xvii Part I: Setting the Scene 1. Geographic Overview of Panama: Pathway to the Continents and Link Between The Seas…………………………………………………...3 EUGENE J. PALKA 2. An Introduction to the Panama Canal Watershed………………………19 RUSSELL S. HARMON 3. Light and Shadows in the Management of the Panama Canal Watershed…………………………………………………...……29 STANLEY HECKADON-MORENO 4. The Geological Development of Panama………………………………..45 RUSSELL S. HARMON Contents viii Part II: The Upper Río Chagres Basin 5 . Igneous Geology and Geochemistry of Igneous Rocks of the Upper Río Chagres Basin…………...…………………………………………..65 GERHARD WÖRNER, RUSSELL S. HARMON, GERALD HARTMANN, and KLAUS SIMON 6. GIS-based and Stream Network Anal