Western U.S. snowpacks, soils, and climate
Analysis of environmental data, including snowpack, soil moisture, and soil temperature data, is posted here along with a log of research activities on this project.
Project begin date: 23 Feb, 2011
Relevant links:
Objectives
The objective of this project is to understand the influence of seasonal snowpacks on montane and subalpine soil temperature and moisture. Possible influences include:
- Insulation of soil during winter, including air-soil temperature offsets and elevational gradients in air vs soil temperature.
- Interannual variability in mean annual soil temperature, winter soil temperature, and spring soil temperature due to year-to-year differences in snowcover duration, snowpack size, timing of snowcover onset or snowmelt, and air temperature during these transitions.
- Timing and amount of soil moisture recharge during snowmelt
- Interannual variability of winter soil moisture due to fall conditions
- Interannual variability in growing season soil moisture due to preceding winter snowpack size.
Hypotheses
Experimental Design
Methods
- Data sources/collection for western U.S. climate and soils data.
- Data quality control - Bad data removal procedures
- Data analysis log
- Programming documentation
- Statistics - Multiple regression and PCA.
- Data will be analyzed for mountain and lowland sites in the interior western U.S., including the stats of AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, UT, and WY.
Results
- Preliminary data and activity log
- Publication outline - Journal article outline, including figures and discussion.