Summary/Goals: Rainlog.org is a cooperative rainfall monitoring network for Arizona. Data collected through this network can be used for a variety of applications, from watershed management activities to drought monitoring at local, county, and state levels. Participants select a rain gauge, install it at home, and report daily total rainfall amounts through the online data entry form.
Activities and outcomes during past year:
RainLog saw significant growth in a number of dimensions during 2006. Registered RainLoggers topped 500 and continue to climb. Geographic coverage was extended beyond the Upper San Pedro and Tucson areas to Phoenix, the state, and areas in neighboring states. Several grants were received. Development of tipping buckets and loggers began.
In 2007 the number of rain loggers increased to 1,300, most of which are located in Pima, Maricopa, and Cochise counties. During summer of this year RainMapper was released to allow people to subscribe and receive notifications of precipitaion near their location. To date, over 2,300 users have signed up to this service. Several newspaper articles were published previous to the monsoon season which helped increased user registration of both Rainlog and RainMapper. A graduate student is working on quality assurance and quality control of the reported rain data. Several talks and posters were presented, including at the Dec. 2007 AGU meeting.
In 2008 the number of registered users continued to grow. Currently there are 1,705 volunteers most of them in Pima, Maricopa, and Cochise counties. The RainMapper service continues to provide successful rain totals. RainMapper now has 2,545 registered users. Candice is continuing her thesis work to solve data quality problems. Gary started talks with researchers and state officials in other countries about the possibility to revamp RainLog to be implemented there.
Plans for the upcoming year:
-- 2009
We plant to implement Matt Garcia's MIST interpolation module to aid in the QA/QC process of our volunteer data. There are plans to make a few changes to implement RainLog in other English-speaking countries like Australia, Saudi Arabia, and India.
-- 2008
A better mechanism to calculate/interpolate precipitation will be implemented.
QA/QC results will help us determine how to make more efficient use of the data reported by users.
Several additions will be programmed to the website to improve user experience, including personalization and data-reporting default values.
The software used by most TV meteorologists across the country is being modified to enable direct import of RainLog data.
Research is underway on low-cost soil moisture monitoring and how to include other hydrologic/meteorologic volunteer data.
Efforts are underway to harvest and display rainfall data from web-linked tipping bucket gauge networks, including flood early warning systems in Pima and Maricopa counties.
-- 2007
The number of participating RainLoggers will pass 1,000, with a large number of new participants coming from the metropolitan Phoenix area. A network of 50+ tipping bucket gauges will be deployed in Phoenix. A subscription service for estimating rainfall at the block level, using advanced precipitation interpolation techniques will be implemented. More funding will be sought.
Organization Involvement:
The center shared a paper explaining a new interpolation method using an approach that was tested on Walnut Ranch. We intend to use this method to aid our QA/QC initiatives.
Shared Resources / Joint Activities:
N/A
Location: Tucson, AZ, USA
URL: N/A
Flood Control District of Maricopa County
Organization Involvement:
The organization has been helpful providing data for our yearly monsoon reports. They also keep sharing their rainfall report cards submitted by their volunteers.
