Research Approach:

SAHRA and its research partners have committed to developing an eco-hydrological transect designed to identify and quantify the effects of vegetation change on water resources. Our integrative approach includes intensive, coordinated observations at key locations and distributed data collection across the landscape and basin scale, both closely coordinated with fine-resolution process modeling.

Intensive Process Study Sites

Intensive process-based study sites are developed to obtain new process knowledge, quantifying how eco-hydrological interactions control the water fluxes and storage that constitute the basin scale water balance. Sites are located in the major ecosystem types characteristic of the western United States including spruce-fir forest, ponderosa pine, alpine meadow, and pinyon juniper forest. Example measurements include:

Distributed Data Collection in Nested Catchments

Activities are designed to represent eco-hydrological interactions, which are the outcome of processes that occur at the meter to hillslope scale, at the scale of landscapes to larger catchments

• Continuous Data Collection - high temporal resolution
  • Metrological stations
  • SNOTEL
  • Scintillometers
  • Ultrasonic Snow depth
• Event-specific Data Collection - high spatial resolution
  • Remote sensing
  • Soil moisture surveys
  • Snow surveys
  • Groundwater sampling
  • Biogeochemical sampling

Iterative Modeling and Measurement

Activities are designed to accurately incorporate the important hydrometeorological, physiographic, and physiological interrelationships in a distributed hydrologic watershed model that includes snow and vegetation processes