Keck HydroWatch Center at UC Berkeley

1. Keck HydroWatch Centerat UC Berkeley Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

2. Investigators Inez Fung Ron Cohen David Culler Bill Dietrich Don DePaolo Jim Kirchner Collaborators Todd Dawson Mark Conrad Collin Bode Mary Power Beth Boyer Tina Chow Project Personnel Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

3. Current State of Water Research and Understanding • Routine obs of • Precipitation • Streamflow • River discharge • Satellite obs of • Clouds • Water vapor (expt) • Snow and ice cover • Disciplinary water research • View of entire lifecycle of water – from sea to sea • High frequency and comprehensive data on hydrologic processes and water pathways • Predictions at small enough space scale and long enough time scale to be useful to human welfare LACKING Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

4. Water in Motion: Key Questions Rain • How is fresh water re-supplied and recycled? • Distribution of precipitation will change as climate changes. Demand for fresh water will increase with population. People • What is the distribution of water vapor in the lowest kilometer of the atmosphere and of soil moisture across the landscape, and how do atmospheric and land surface processes alter these distributions? Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

5. Water in Motion: Key Questions (contd) • How long do watersheds store water in the subsurface, and by what combination of flowpaths does this water reach the stream? Long-tailed travel time distribution means that contaminant cleanup will be much slower than one would otherwise expect. • what controls water and solute fluxes? • how does rainfall travel to the stream? • how fast does it get there? • what happens to it chemically on its way to the stream? Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

6. Colored digital vegetation and topography from a lidar survey Two Contrasting Study Watersheds • Elder Creek Watershed • Winter rain, summer dry • Sedimentary bedrock • Steep, no floodplain • Old growth forest • Sagehen Creek Field Station • Winter snow, spring melt • Volcanic bedrock • Gravel bedded, runs through a meadow • Forest cut in the early 1900’s Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

7. Four streamflow gauges on Sagehen Creek Three gauges on ephemeral tributaries Sagehen Creek Field Station Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

8. SNOTEL site snow depth snow water content temperature soil moisture Gauging stn. flow stream temp. conductivity Meadow wx stn. temperature precipitation humidity solar radiation snow depth winds barometric press. soil moisture soil temp. Summit wx stn. temperature precipitation humidity solar radiation winds DRI wx stations temperature humidity soil moisture winds Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

9. Data relay towers Sagehen wireless data infrastructure Data from upper basin is relayed to summit tower. Data from lower basin is relayed to field station headquarters, then to internet via satellite. Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

10. ACRR vegetated from Lidar data ACRR bare earth from Lidar data ELDER CREEK: 17 km2; 7 km long; 400 to 1200 m elevation; 2000 m annual rainfall (strongly seasonal); steep, landslide-prone topography with a boulder-covered channels in narrow canyons. One of the largest uncut area of forests in California. Lower area of Elder Creek watershed, showing the channel network Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

11. USGS station operating since 12-22-1964 USGS on Tenmile 1955-1977 Elder Creek USGS station operating since 12-22-1964 Branscomb USGS 1947-1977 And restarted by UCB since 1990 Existing Hydrologic Programs at Elder Creek Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

12. Elder Creek Wireless Infrastructure Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

13. Keck HydroWatch Project • Watersheds are gatekeepers of the • hydrologic cycle... controlling stream flow, soil moisture, evapo-transpiration and groundwater supply. • Biogeochemical cycle…controlling solute fluxes, evolution of atmos. CO2,nutrient dynamics, and pollutant delivery to downstream waters. • Landform evolution… controlling rates and patterns of erosion and sediment delivery GOAL:a new observation and modeling paradigm to advance our understanding of the water cycle and our ability to predict its changes Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

14. (I) Autonomous Measurements of Atmos Water At 200 points in each watershed will be motes that measure: • Air Temperature • Relative Humidity • Air Pressure • Location (GPS) • Soil Moisture/Temperature Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

15. (II) Soil Moisture • Soil moisture dynamics influence runoff generation and control water availability to plants and, thereby, affect air humidity. • We will install wireless soil moisture monitoring devices across diverse topography to record storm and seasonal dynamics. Time domain reflectometry (TDR) Electromagnetic pulse sent down parallel waveguides that are inserted in the soil. Travel time across soil between guides is a function of the water content. Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

16. (III) Intensive Stream Measurements • Sample rainfall and streamflow daily • with higher-frequency sampling during selected storm events. • Chemical analysis, including 18O • Monitor major elements,pH, etc. continuouslyvia online autoanalyzers Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

17. H2O, HDO, H218O Dust & moisture Sr, Nd, Pb, U, S isotopes Evapo-transpiration effects (O,H isotopes) Adsorption, desorption, mineral dissolution and precipitation (Sr, U, C isotopes) Biological activity(C, H, N, S, Fe isotopes) (IV) Integrative Water Tracers Isotopic tracers are provided by nature and can help identify sources of water and dissolved constituents Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

18. Condensation Fractionation No fractionation Evaporation Transpiration Canopy Evaporation Evaporation Ocean Land Atmospheric Model: WRF … • Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model • Collaborative development: The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and the Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL), the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA), the Naval Research Laboratory, Oklahoma University, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). • Flexible application • Flexible resolution: meters to km • We will incorporate isotopes and other water tracers into WRF. Schematic of isotope code incorporated into NCAR climate model (J-E Lee, PhD thesis, UC Berkeley) Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

19. (1) Including all the details makes models unwieldy and undecipherable . Requires too much information about terrain properties. Not readily generalizable to the globe. (2) Spatially extended, but not spatially disaggregated, models... a 'middle path' Two key parameters: mean travel time o = L/2 Peclet number Pe = L/2D …to be coupled to a Hydrologic Model: tbd Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

20. Schedule: 2006 • Initiate development of new sensors, precipitation sampler • Infrastructure “proof-of-concept” by deploying off-the-shelf components • April-Sept: Sagehen • Nov-April: Elder Creek • Data Synthesis and Modeling: • Develop software for data archival and retrieval • Adapt isotope codes to atmospheric WRF model • Exercise WRF model in various resolutions (from meters to km) Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

21. Schedule: 2007 • Bench test and field test new sensors and instruments • Extend infrastructure/communication network • Begin large scale replication of sensors • Evaluate hydrology models • Establish a synthetic observing network structure for modeling and build simulation capacity and data assimilation capacity • Integrate atmospheric and ground water models into a single model for each watershed Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

22. Schedule: 2008 • Full year of observations at both sites • Integrate water system model for watershed • Interim Assessment • Evaluate water system model using new observations (waiting for surprises!) • Assess observational network in terms of sensor accuracy, coverage (space & time), reliability • Assess strategy for growing obs network • Science: • new constraints on subsurface properties of watersheds • new discoveries from high-resolution observations Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

23. Schedule: 2009 • Second full year of observations at both sites • Address key science questions that focus on the life-cycle of water • Develop strategy for large scale deployment – science, technical, fund raising Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

24. Data Synthesis All Scientific Investigation All Management Monthly meeting of entire team Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

25. Leveraging Keck Funding • SCIENTIFIC • NSF, NOAA, NASA, DoE, USGS • Grad fellowships • MAINTENANCE OF INFRASTRUCTURE • UCOP • National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

26. Expected Outcomes • Prototype a new observing system and a new integrated model for the life cycle of water • For Sagehen and Elder Creek: • Understanding the sources, transport, and interactions of water along its path • Scenarios of changes in quantity and quality of water given climate and human perturbations Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley

27. Long-Term Impact • Transformative observations of water in motion – analogous to weather satellites • Improve and extend forecast of water dynamics: • Month forecast of floods/droughts/streamflow • 10 day forecast of river levels • Source attribution of distributed pollutants Keck HydroWatch – UC Berkeley