{"id":29,"date":"2008-04-29T23:04:55","date_gmt":"2008-04-30T05:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anthony.darrouzet-nardi.net\/scienceblog\/?p=29"},"modified":"2018-05-21T13:19:35","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T17:19:35","slug":"snow-survey-in-the-soddie-watershed-2008-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/?p=29","title":{"rendered":"Snow survey in the Soddie Watershed 2008: results"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"brian_snowcat.JPG\"<\/center>Snow survey results are in! I’m sharing them here so that all of you who helped collect the points can see the fruits of your labor. And of course to satisfy you other random internet surfers who are dying to see these snow depth numbers.<\/p>\n

First off, I want to sincerely thank all of the people who helped: Lucas, Andrew, Erik, Brian, Rob, Cherlyn, Bill, Alisa, Jackie, and Mark’s snow class interns who dug some of the snow pits. Lucas deserves special thanks for showing me how to dig the snow pits, driving the snow cat and generally helping me the whole way through, but then again he already received some brewskis for his efforts! Jackie also deserves thanks and praise for making us hella tasty lunches.<\/p>\n

With no further ado, the results (depths are in centimeters):<\/p>\n

\"snow_results_legend.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"snow_results_aerial.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Pretty cool! 501 points, measured by hand over 4 days (3\/30\/08 – 4\/2\/08). The trends are pretty clear on the graphic above, but still a few things to notice: 1. The upper alpine dry meadow tundra has very little snow, which means very little N input in those areas. This correlates well with pH and some of the soil C and N numbers (not shown here). 2. Trees are great snow collectors. You can see the buildup, especially in the krummholz (ribbons of stunted windblown trees). 3. The deepest patches and the most variable areas are in the lower krummholz where large cornices form in the ribbons of trees. Those who sampled in those areas can attest to how impressive the cornices are. (Go ahead, let’s see those testimonial comments!) The deepest one I measured was 4.5 m. However, down in the thick forest, the snow is a lot more even, staying in the 1-2 m range.<\/p>\n

Once I multiply the snow depth by the N concentrations in the snow, I’ll get a good estimate of spatial heterogeneity in wintertime N inputs across the watershed. Those N concentrations are measured by digging snow pits. Here’s a picture of a snow pit I dug. the holes in the pit wall are from the density-measuring procedure.<\/p>\n

\"snowpit.jpg\"<\/p>\n

In addition to showing us where atmospheric nitrogen deposition is melting into ecosystem soils, which was the primary objective<\/a> here, these data are interesting in the context of a theory called the landscape continuum model<\/a> (LCM). One of the predictions of the LCM is that through transport by wind and gravity, higher elevation areas subsidize lower elevation areas with water and nutrients. Check out this graphic showing March\/April snow on top of July soil moisture:<\/p>\n

\"snow_results_jul_moisture.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Here we can see the LCM in action. While the snowpack collects in the krummholz, you can see that once it melts out, it collects in the flat toeslope at the bottom of the watershed. When I write this data up for publication, I will attempt to calculate the magnitude of this water subsidy from high ground to low ground. Should be rad.<\/p>\n

Anyway, thanks again to all the helpers. It was pretty fun except for the 14 hour days.<\/p>\n

\"sunday_survey.jpg\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Snow survey results are in! I’m sharing them here so that all of you who helped collect the points can see the fruits of your labor. And of course to satisfy you other random internet surfers who are dying to see these snow depth numbers. First off, I want to sincerely thank all of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2020,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/2020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}