Keck HydroWatch Center at UC Berkeley

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Keck HydroWatch Centerat UC Berkeley
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Project Personnel

• 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

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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
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Water in Motion Key Questions

• How is fresh water re-supplied and recycled?
• Distribution of precipitation will change as
  climate changes. Demand for fresh water will
  increase with population.

Rain
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?

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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?

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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 1900s

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Sagehen Creek Field Station
Four streamflow gauges on Sagehen Creek
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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
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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.
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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
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Existing Hydrologic Programs at Elder Creek
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Elder Creek Wireless Infrastructure
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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
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(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

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(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.
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(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

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(IV) Integrative Water Tracers
Isotopic tracers are provided by nature and can
help identify sources of water and dissolved
constituents
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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)
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to be coupled to a Hydrologic Model tbd
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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)

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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

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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

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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

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Management
Monthly meeting of entire team
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Leveraging Keck Funding

• SCIENTIFIC
• NSF, NOAA, NASA, DoE, USGS
• Grad fellowships
• MAINTENANCE OF INFRASTRUCTURE
• UCOP
• National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics

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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

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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