Manual snow course observations, raw met data, raw snow depth observations, locations, and associated metadata for Oregon sites

Dates

Publication Date: 2016
Start Date: 2012
End Date: 2014

Citation

Roth, T.R., A. Nolin, and R. Haggerty, 2014. Willamette Water 2100 Forest Elevational Snow Transect (ForEST) Project, meteorological and snow course data. National Science Foundation Grant No. 1039192.

Summary

OSU_SnowCourse Summary: Manual snow course observations were collected over WY 2012-2014 from four paired forest-open sites chosen to span a broad elevation range. Study sites were located in the upper McKenzie (McK) River watershed, approximately 100 km east of Corvallis, Oregon, on the western slope of the Cascade Range and in the Middle Fork Willamette (MFW) watershed, located to the south of the McKenzie. The sites were designated based on elevation, with a range of 1110-1480 m. Distributed snow depth and snow water equivalent (SWE) observations were collected via monthly manual snow courses from 1 November through 1 April and bi-weekly thereafter. Snow courses spanned 500 m of forested terrain and 500 m of adjacent open terrain. [...]

Summary

OSU_SnowCourse Summary: Manual snow course observations were collected over WY 2012-2014 from four paired forest-open sites chosen to span a broad elevation range. Study sites were located in the upper McKenzie (McK) River watershed, approximately 100 km east of Corvallis, Oregon, on the western slope of the Cascade Range and in the Middle Fork Willamette (MFW) watershed, located to the south of the McKenzie. The sites were designated based on elevation, with a range of 1110-1480 m. Distributed snow depth and snow water equivalent (SWE) observations were collected via monthly manual snow courses from 1 November through 1 April and bi-weekly thereafter. Snow courses spanned 500 m of forested terrain and 500 m of adjacent open terrain. Snow depth observations were collected approximately every 10 m and SWE was measured every 100 m along the snow courses with a federal snow sampler. These data are raw observations and have not been quality controlled in any way. Distance along the transect was estimated in the field.

OSU_SnowDepth Summary: 10-minute snow depth observations collected at OSU met stations in the upper McKenzie River Watershed and the Middle Fork Willamette Watershed during Water Years 2012-2014. Each meterological tower was deployed to represent either a forested or an open area at a particular site, and generally the locations were paired, with a meterological station deployed in the forest and in the open area at a single site. These data were collected in conjunction with manual snow course observations, and the meterological stations were located in the approximate center of each forest or open snow course transect. These data have undergone basic quality control. See manufacturer specifications for individual instruments to determine sensor accuracy. This file was compiled from individual raw data files (named "RawData.txt" within each site and year directory) provided by OSU, along with metadata of site attributes. We converted the Excel-based timestamp (seconds since origin) to a date, changed the NaN flags for missing data to NA, and added site attributes such as site name and cover. We replaced positive values with NA, since snow depth values in raw data are negative (i.e., flipped, with some correction to use the height of the sensor as zero). Thus, positive snow depth values in the raw data equal negative snow depth values. Second, the sign of the data was switched to make them positive. Then, the smooth.m (MATLAB) function was used to roughly smooth the data, with a moving window of 50 points.
Third, outliers were removed. All values higher than the smoothed values +10, were replaced with NA. In some cases, further single point outliers were removed.

OSU_Met Summary: Raw, 10-minute meteorological observations collected at OSU met stations in the upper McKenzie River Watershed and the Middle Fork Willamette Watershed during Water Years 2012-2014. Each meterological tower was deployed to represent either a forested or an open area at a particular site, and generally the locations were paired, with a meterological station deployed in the forest and in the open area at a single site. These data were collected in conjunction with manual snow course observations, and the meteorological stations were located in the approximate center of each forest or open snow course transect. These stations were deployed to collect numerous meteorological variables, of which snow depth and wind speed are included here. These data are raw datalogger output and have not been quality controlled in any way. See manufacturer specifications for individual instruments to determine sensor accuracy. This file was compiled from individual raw data files (named "RawData.txt" within each site and year directory) provided by OSU, along with metadata of site attributes. We converted the Excel-based timestamp (seconds since origin) to a date, changed the NaN and 7999 flags for missing data to NA, and added site attributes such as site name and cover.

OSU_Location Summary: Location Metadata for manual snow course observations and meteorological sensors. These data are compiled from GPS data for which the horizontal accuracy is unknown, and from processed hemispherical photographs. They have not been quality controlled in any way.

OSU_SnowCourse Attributes: Institution - Oregon State University (OSU); Watershed - McKenzie (McK) or Middle Fork Willamette (MFW); Site - site name; RelativeElev - elevation category, used in study design. Low, Mid, or High; Cover - designates whether location was in the portion of the transect categorized as open or forest; WY - Water Year, e.g. Water Year 2013 = 2012-10-01 through 2013-09-30.; Year; Month; Day; Julian - Julian day, starting with the beginning of the year, i.e., January 1 = 1 and February 1 = 32; Date - mm/dd/yyyy; Value - observed value; Units - SWE_cm = snow water equivalent in cm, or Depth_cm = snow depth, in cm.; Distance - distance along the transect in m, estimated; Sample - sample number along the trasect, to tie to location metadata (only for SWE).

OSU_SnowDepth Attributes: Date - MM/DD/YY HH:MM with hours in 24 hour format; SnowDepth - QCd snow depth in cm; DateTimeUTC - Date and time of observation in UTC. yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss; DateTimeLocal - Date and time observations in Pacific Standard Time (-8 UTC) and adjusted for Pacific Daylight Time (-7 UTC). yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss; UTCoffset - Number of hours of offset from UTC time, i.e., -8 during PST and -7 during PDT; WY - Water Year, e.g. Water Year 2013 = 2012-10-01 through 2013-09-30. Based on local time.; OSUName - Name of met station used internally by OSU; Cover - Forest or Open; Watershed - McKenzie (McK) or MF Willamette (MFW); Site - General site name without regard to forest cover; Status - qc, for quality controlled; Institution - Oregon State University (OSU)

OSU_Met Attributes: Date - Date and time of observation in Pacific Standard Time with no correction for Daylight Savings Time. mm/dd/yy hh:mm or mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm; WindSpeed - wind speed in m/s; SnowDepth - snow depth in cm, note that this is uncorrected, distance from pinger to snow, and needs to be reversed to get snow depth.; DateTimeUTC - Date and time of observation in UTC. yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss; DateTimeLocal - Date and time observations in Pacific Standard Time (-8 UTC) and adjusted for Pacific Daylight Time (-7 UTC). yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss; UTCoffset - Number of hours of offset from UTC time, i.e., -8 during PST and -7 during PDT; WY - Water Year, e.g. Water Year 2013 = 2012-10-01 through 2013-09-30. Based on local time.; OSUName - Name of met station used internally by OSU; Cover - Forest or Open; Watershed - McKenzie (McK) or MF Willamette (MFW); Site - General site name without regard to forest cover. Sites typically included a forest and an open location.; Status - raw data; Institution - Oregon State University (OSU)

OSU_Location Attributes: Institution - Oregon State University (OSU); Watershed - McKenzie (McK) or Middle Fork Willamette (MFW); RelativeElev - designation of relative elevation category, used in study design. Low, Mid, or High; SiteName - site name; AltSiteName - alternative name used for some aspects of data collection; Cover - designates whether location was in the portion of the transect categorized as open or forest; TransectName - Gives a unique name by which to aggregate multiple SWE locations -- note that the McKMidForest changed position in 2013, so the positions were estimated in ArcMap by eye -- SWE 6 is in both, but has rows with two transect names to help with aggregating. McKMidForestA is 2012 and McKMidForestB is 2013 and 2014.; Obs - snow course or sensor (meteorological station) location; Latitude - in decimal degrees; Longitude - in decimal degrees; Datum - WGS1984; Sample - Unique sample number that ties to the SWE measurements; SWE - SWE sample number that ties to the SWE measurements; Source - source of coordinates, measured by Travis Roth, or estimated in ArcMap by eye; PerCanopyOpen - percent of canopy that is open, from Gap Light Analyzer processing of hemispherical photographs, i.e., sky view fraction; MetColocation - designates which meteorological station is in close proximity

Contacts

Point of Contact :: Travis Roth
Principal Investigator :: Anne Nolin
Cooperator/Partner :: Susan E. Dickerson-Lange
Distributor :: U.S. Geological Survey - ScienceBase
Metadata Contact :: Susan E. Dickerson-Lange
Originator :: Travis Roth, Anne W. Nolin

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oregon.fgdc.xml Original FGDC Metadata	View	40.88 KB	application/fgdc+xml
OSU_Location_Metadata.csv		7.81 KB	text/csv
OSU_Location_Metadata_README.txt		2.36 KB	text/plain
OSU_Met_10min_Raw_WY20122014.csv		75.26 MB	text/csv
OSU_Met_10min_Raw_WY20122014_README.txt		3.14 KB	text/plain
OSU_SnowCourse_WY20122014.csv		933.81 KB	text/csv
OSU_SnowCourse_WY20122014_README.txt		2.63 KB	text/plain
OSU_SnowDepth_10min_QC_WY20122014.csv		75.29 MB	text/csv
OSU_SnowDepth_10min_QC_WY20122014_README.txt		3.23 KB	text/plain

Related External Resources

Type: Online Link

Web Link	http://dx.doi.org/10.5066/F70C4SW3

Type: webLink

Access point for data	http://dx.doi.org/10.5066/F70C4SW3

Purpose

Climate change is projected to cause earlier snowmelt, with potentially serious consequences for terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and for municipal and agricultural water supplies. However, if forests can be managed to retain snow longer, some of these environmental and financial impacts may be mitigated. Recent results from our research team demonstrate that in areas with relatively warm winters, strategically-cut forest gaps could offset climatic warming by increasing snow retention on the landscape and delaying runoff. However, in areas with colder winters, the opposite is true, as snow lasts longer under the forest canopy. We will map these climate-forest-snow interactions across the Pacific Northwest, predicting how forest change is likely to affect snow duration in different locations and testing those predictions against careful observations from our field sites and a network of citizen scientists. Working with regional forest and water managers, we will identify strategies for applying these findings to decision-making, linking climate-forest-snow interactions to ecohydrologic conditions important to management. Results from this project will help managers to act strategically to maximize snow retention (protecting forests in some areas while opening gaps in others), providing more water later in the season for hydropower, agriculture, and fish flows.

Manual snow course observations, raw met data, raw snow depth observations, locations, and associated metadata for Oregon sites

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