MRI: Development of a basin-scale water-balance instrument cluster for hydrologic, atmospheric and ecosystem science

1126887巴尔斯这项重大研究仪器赠款支持在内华达山脉开发一个流域规模(4500平方公里)的综合水文观测系统，该系统跨越了美国河流流域的雨雪高程转换。盆地规模的仪器将包括23个本地传感器群，每个传感器群带有10-20个积雪深度传感器和气象传感器，包括温度、降水和湿度。这些集群的一个子集将配备传感器，用于测量入射和反射的太阳辐射、土壤水分和温度以及树木树液流量传感器，后者用于阐明春季蒸散开始的时间取决于海拔。流域尺度的仪器设计考虑到了综合测量关键的水循环水库、通量及其控制因素的需要，在具有不同海拔、坡向、坡度和植被覆盖的传感器集群位置的高Sierras地区。所有传感器观测将与无线通信战略捆绑在一起，将实时观测提供给中央信息管理系统，该系统将开放给公众通过网络访问。需要在更大的时空尺度上量化关键的水循环水库及其之间的平衡，这是水文科学界的一个长期目标。拟议的水文观测系统侧重于积雪主导的山区生态系统，该生态系统支持加州中央山谷农业综合企业帝国的水需求和数千万加州居民的需求。美国河流流域水文观测站的规模将是史无前例的，它将利用美国国家科学基金会现有的投资，在南部塞拉斯山脉进行较小规模的原型雪水文学观测，并通过作为南塞拉利昂关键地带观测站一部分的地球科学部关键区域观测站(CZO)计划资助更广泛分布和更有重点的生态水文学观测。与加州水资源部和萨克拉门托市政公用事业区等相关州机构的伙伴关系将促进和支持这一发展。这个观测系统产生的数据将为新的建模工具提供信息，以产生定量的气候评估，影响水文预报，探测系统对气候和土地覆盖扰动的反应，增加对流域规模水循环的过程理解，并为目前无法实现的规模的基础设施规划提供可靠的情景。可通过收集的观测解决的科学问题将包括：1)地形和生态模式如何影响山区水通量的可变性？2)受到多重扰动的水文系统如何响应？3)脉冲和变化如何通过水文系统传播？4)如何提高对这些响应的预测能力？PI团队包括加州大学默塞德分校的教师，这是一家非博士授予机构，拥有水文学和环境工程方面的专业知识，以及美国农业部机构的一名水文学家。开发将吸引本科生参与建设，无线电信战略和开发将通过以下方式完成：支持收购无线无线电和微型化计算架构的分奖，以及加州大学伯克利分校专门从事无线通信开发的合作计算机科学家设计和完成网络拓扑。***

1126887BalesThis Major Research Instrumentation grant supports development of a basin-scale (4,500 km2) integrated hydrologic observation system in the Sierra Nevada Mountains spanning the rain-snow elevation transition in the American River basin. The basin-scale instrument will include 23 local sensor clusters each with 10-20 snow depth sensors and meteorological sensors to include temperature, precipitation and humidity. A subset of the clusters will have sensors for the measurement of incident and reflected solar radiation, soil moisture and temperature and tree sap flow sensors, the latter to elucidate the elevation dependent timing of the onset of evapotranspiration in the spring. The basin-scale instrument design takes into consideration the needs for integrated measurement of key water cycle reservoirs, fluxes and their controlling factors in the high Sierras with sensor cluster sitings across variable elevation, aspect, slope and vegetation cover. All of the sensor observations will be tied with a wireless communications strategy delivering real-time observations to a central information management system that will be open for public access via the web. The need for quantification of key water cycle reservoirs and the balances between them at increased spatiotemporal scales is a long standing goal of the hydrologic science community. The proposed hydrologic observation system focuses on a snowpack dominated mountain ecosystem that supports the water needs of California's Central Valley agribusiness empire and the needs of tens of millions of California residents. The American River basin hydrologic observatory will be unprecedented in scale and leveraged on existing NSF investments in smaller prototype snow hydrology observations in the southern Sierras and more widely distributed and focused ecohydrologic observations funded through the Division of Earth Sciences Critical Zone Observatories (CZO) program as part of the Southern Sierra CZO. Partnerships with relevant state agencies including the California Department of Water Resources and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District will foster and support the development. Data generated from this observation system will inform new classes of modeling tools to produce quantitative climate assessments, influence hydrologic forecasting, probe system response to climate and land-cover perturbations, increase process understanding of basin-scale water cycles, and provide defensible scenarios for infrastructure planning at a scale currently not possible. Scientific questions that will be addressable using collected observations will include: 1)) How do physiographic and ecological patterns influence the variability of mountain water fluxes?; 2) How do hydrologic systems that are subjected to multiple perturbations respond?; 3) How do pulses and changes propagate through the hydrologic system?; and 4) How can the predictive ability for these responses be improved? The PI team includes faculty at UC-Merced, a non-Ph.D. granting institution, with expertise in hydrology and environmental engineering, and a USDA agency hydrologist. The development will engage undergraduate students in construction and the wireless telecommunication strategy and development will be accomplished through subaward to support acquisition of wireless radio and miniaturized computing architectures and for a collaborating computer scientist at UC-Berkeley who specializes in wireless communications development to design and complete the network topology. ***