Constraining Physical Understanding of Aerosol Loading, Biogeochemistry, and Snowmelt Hydrology from Hillslope to Watershed Scale in the East River Scientific Focus Area
- Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (United States); University of Utah
- Utah State Univ., Logan, UT (United States)
- National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO (United States)
The mountain snowpack is a critical component of regional hydrology, ecology, biogeochemistry, and climate in the Western US. This project leveraged the East River Scientific Focus Area (SFA), as an outdoor laboratory to address a significant gap in our understanding of the mountain snowpack; namely, how atmospheric constituent deposition on snowpack influences snow energy balance and nutrient/chemical cycling, and how snowmelt timing and intensity exerts controls on emergent biogeochemical and ecohydrologic behavior. This aligned with East River SFA goals to integrate landscape scale measurements and physical based modeling tools to improve understanding of controls on runoff production, ecohydrology, biogeochemical cycling, and land surface energy partitioning in high mountain watersheds. The project included observations of snowpack at multiple scales, measurements of snow and deposited aerosols properties, in situ time series of surface energy balance, and spatially distributed, process-based snowmelt modeling.
- Research Organization:
- University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0019194
- OSTI ID:
- 1883239
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-UTAH-0019194
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English