HR: 0800h
AN: GC41A-0106    [Abstracts]
TI: Stream Water Temperature and Climate Variability along Two Elevational Gradients in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, U.S.A.
AU: * Solomon, M
EM: madeline.solomon@gmail.com
AF: Geography Department, 507 McCone Hall, U.C. Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
AU: Cuffey, K
EM: kcuffey@berkeley.edu
AF: Geography Department, 507 McCone Hall, U.C. Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
AU: Hunsaker, C T
EM: chunsaker@fs.fed.us
AF: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Sierra Nevada Research Center, 2081 E. Sierra Avenue, Fresno, CA 93710, United States
AB: Water temperature plays an important role in life cycles and species interactions of aquatic biota in alpine streams. Climatic variability and global change affect the landscape characteristics, flow regime and air-surface water energy balance that collectively determine stream water temperature. Our high frequency measurements of stream temperatures over space and time along two elevational gradients in the Sierra Nevada mountains give insight into the effects of climate variability and change on water temperatures of snowmelt dominated upland streams. ‘Cumulative degree days' is an ecologically relevant metric that integrates the effects of differences in precipitation, snowmelt timing, and air temperature. We present our initial analyses of stream temperature data collected from two study sites in the Sierra Nevada: Sagehen Creek and the Kings River Experimental Watershed. These range in elevation from 1800-2600 m and represent a range of runoff regimes.
DE: 1616 Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 1655 Water cycles (1836)
DE: 1871 Surface water quality
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting