HR: 1340h
AN: H53G-1505    [Abstracts]
TI: The Use of Distributed Temperature/Light Probes to Capture the Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Snowmelt and Headwater Stream Discharge
AU: * Lyon, S W
EM: slyon@hwr.arizona.edu
AF: Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, HJ Harshbarger Bldg, Tucson, AZ 85721, United States
AU: Troch, P A
EM: patroch@hwr.arizona.edu
AF: Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, HJ Harshbarger Bldg, Tucson, AZ 85721, United States
AU: Broxton, P D
EM: broxtopd@hwr.arizona.edu
AF: Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, HJ Harshbarger Bldg, Tucson, AZ 85721, United States
AU: Molotch, N P
EM: molotch@seas.ucla.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California – Los Angeles, Boelter Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
AU: Brooks, P D
EM: brooks@hwr.arizona.edu
AF: Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, HJ Harshbarger Bldg, Tucson, AZ 85721, United States
AB: Knowing how wet or dry the landscape is provides a valuable piece of information. It can tell us what pathways are active or provide insight to how long water resides in a catchment or help close a water balance. Traditional methods to monitor the hydrologic state of the landscape are often too temporally sparse (e.g., snapshots from remote sensing) or spatially coarse (e.g., point measures from data-logging piezometers) to reflect the dynamic nature of water as it moves through and interacts with the landscape. In this study, we employ inexpensive temperature/light sensors to monitor the distribution of snowmelt and headwater stream discharge as a proxy for hydrological state of the landscape with high spatial and temporal resolution. This is done at Redondo Peak which offers the largest (local relief over 1,100 m) of the resurgent domes within the caldera complex of the Valles Caldera National Preserve located near Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA. The first-order streams that drain Redondo Peak do so through different aspects and thus receive, on average, different amounts of solar energy. This impacts groundwater recharge through variations in sublimation, evaporation, and transpiration. To monitor the role this variation plays with respect to spatio-temporal dynamics of snowmelt and headwater stream discharge, we have installed 150 temperature/light probes in seven different streambeds draining through unique aspects of the peak. The variation of daily temperature/light levels relative to seasonal change in mean temperature/light levels provides a metric of the spatial distribution of surface waters and snow cover. Based on a conceptual model of a groundwater "mound" within the peak that roughly follows the shape of the land surface, such a metric relates directly to the amount of water in the landscape.
UR: http://hwr.arizona.edu/~surface/fieldsites/valles.html
DE: 1830 Groundwater/surface water interaction
DE: 1848 Monitoring networks
DE: 1863 Snow and ice (0736, 0738, 0776, 1827)
DE: 1876 Water budgets
DE: 1895 Instruments and techniques: monitoring
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting