Observatory design in the mountain west: scaling measurements & modeling in the San Joaquin

Valley & Sierra Nevada

Scope: Establish a “virtual” hydrologic observatory, & provide direction for building new infrastructure in an actual observatory.

Focus: Build infrastructure for improving the knowledge base for sound hydrologic management in the Sierra Nevada, San Joaquin Valley & across the West

Greater San Joaquin R. basin, encompassing American R. to north through Kings R. in south

PI: Roger Bales, UC Mercedhttps://eng.ucmerced.edu/snri

San Joaquin virtual observatory

Observatory design concept: Establish intensive measurements at ground-based instrument clusters, integrated with broad coverage offered by satellite remote sensing, plus operational networks.

NIMS payload of sensors deployed in San Joaquin R.

Science challenge: Scaling between instrument clusters is a major challenge. Basing an observatory on instrument clusters at representative points across the landscape recognizes that it is logistically infeasible to measure everything, everywhere, all the time. Instrument clusters co-locate key measurements, in order to illuminate linkages among processes within each cluster's relatively small footprint.

Embedded sensor network for spatial snow & meteorology

San Joaquin virtual observatorySpecific aims– Formulate basin-scale measurement & modeling strategies for priority

research, through analysis of existing operational & research data– Assess different instrument cluster designs to provide the ground-based

measurements needed for hydrologic process research

Example data− Daily satellite snowpack

products− Streamflow, weather &

snow data from operational & research networks

− Soil moisture & water quality data from research networks

− Topography, vegetation characteristics & other spatial data Merced & Tuolumne R. sub-basins are

the focus for this project