NSF Snow Hydrology project at the Marcell Experimental Forest
Codes and data updated weekly
This proposal aims to advance the process understanding of snow hydrology in peatland catchments and improve their representation within Earth System Models. Although peatlands cover only ~3% of the land surface, they store around one-third to one-half of all soil carbon. Due to the tight coupling between carbon decomposition and hydrological dynamics, peatlands are increasingly at risk of becoming large carbon sources due to increasing temperatures and shifts in seasonal precipitation, particularly due to snow-to-rain transitions found at the southern edge of the peatland distribution. Despite their global importance, the hydrology of peatlands remains difficult to resolve due to (i) the spatially heterogeneous land surface within peatland watersheds (e.g., forests, open water, saturated surface), and (ii) the dynamic hydrological connectivity between peatland landscape units. These distinct terrestrial-aquatic interfaces make peatlands a research frontier for Earth System modeling and prediction.
Here, we will achieve our project goals through iterations between field campaigns designed to fill in critical data gaps within models, and model predictions that help identify knowledge gaps in our process understanding. The research questions are centered around three main drivers of snow hydrology in peatland catchments: “forest,” “frost,” and “flow,” with an overarching hypothesis that the spatially heterogeneous landscape units within peatlands and the hydrological connectivity across them will critically regulate the seasonal dynamics of snowpack evolution, frost development, water table fluctuations, and streamflow at the watershed scale. Field measurements combined with an extensive set of existing long-term monitoring and data at the Marcell Experimental Forest (MEF) in northern Minnesota will be used to calibrate and validate a new module of the Community Land Model (CLM) v.5.0 that allows for intra-hillslope lateral subsurface flow, and to scale plot-scale measurements to watershed- scale predictions.
Data and Codes Sorted raw and cleaned data from the 2022-2023 field season. Codes for data cleaning, QAQC, analysis, and viz are sorted by lead number
Figures Find all simple data plots here sorted by major topic (snow, soils, etc.
Snow accumulation trends in S2 and S6 from December 2022 through April 2023
Or, if you are more spatially inclined take a look at the same data in gif form!
Tune back in throughout 2023-2025 for more updates as research continues.
Citations:
- M. W. Jones, X. Feng, K. Hoffman, S. D. Sebestyen, S. Dymond, “Snow, Soil frost, and Hydrologic Connectivity in Peatland Watersheds”, Western Snow Conference 2023, Flagstaff, AZ, April 2023 Proceedings in Preparation
- M. W. Jones, S. D. Sebestyen, S. F. Dymond, G-H. C. Ng, X. Feng, "Frost Decouples Spring Streamflow from Snowmelt in Headwater Catchments", Journal of Hydrology, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128801