Progress 07/01/10 to 06/30/11
Outputs
OUTPUTS: Data collection and analysis activities related to urban water conservation to mitigate drought, water sources for wetlands and vulnerabilities to drought, and watershed-based policies and procedures to mitigate drought Screening of local bigtooth maple (Acer grandidentatum) populations via Google Earth, aerial photography, interviews, and on-ground searches has been done. Out of 65 trees selected for further review, 11 have been chosen for in-depth evaluation and several are being evaluated commercially under a material transfer agreement. Ten of the 11 trees have been propagated in a nursery environment for further study and evaluation of marketability. An MS student funded by the project completed their degree, and a PhD student partially funded by the project began the research phase of their degree. Detailed maps of soil salinity produced under the project for 35 agricultural fields in Northern Utah, contributed to the regional-scale determination of the extent and severity of soil salinity in Cache County, Utah within the Bear River Basin. Hundreds of soil samples were obtained at depth from each field and will be used for detailed soil physical and chemical property determination and the calibration of remote sensors used to map soil properties. A large-scale, drainage lysimeter project was designed to develop water balances for ornamental landscapes differing only in plant material utilized. The actual water use of different classes of plant material (trees, turfgrass, and perennials) in the study was compared to modeled water use determined with the Hydrus-1D hydrologic model of water flow and solute transport. Actual water use was determined by monitoring leachate and irrigation volumes in combination with soil moisture. Canopy cover of plant materials and leachate water quality in the landscapes were also measured over time. Gillies, R. R., S.-Y. Wang, and W.-R. Huang, Changes of winter precipitation regime in China over the past half century. AGU Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting, Taipei, Taiwan, 22-25 June, 2010. Ingram, H. and J. Endter-Wada. 2009. Frames and ways of knowing: Key considerations for policy responses to climate risk and vulnerability. Proceedings of the Seventh International Science Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IHDP Open Meeting 2009), Bonn, Germany, April 26-30, 2009. Mahat, V. and D. G. Tarboton, (2010), "Modeling the effect of vegetation on the accumulation and melting of snow," Water Across Interfaces, CUAHSI's Second Biennial Science Meeting, Boulder, Colorado, July 19-21, p.Pst-1, http://www.cuahsi.org/biennial2010/docs/CUAHSI-Biennial2010-MeetingPr ogram.pdf. Sun, H. , K. Kopp, Dietz, M., Jones, S. and J., Fan. 2010. A Comprehensive Research Method to Investigate the Environmental Issues of Urban Landscapes--Water Use and Nitrogen Leaching of Urban Landscapes on Community Water Quantity and Quality. HortScience 45(8):S97. (Abstr.) Sun, H. and K. Kopp. 2010. Developing Water Balances of Ornamental Landscapes. HortScience 45(8):S263. (Abstr.) PARTICIPANTS: Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Utah Climate Center, Center For Water Efficient Landscaping, Utah Botanical Center, College of Natural Resources, USU Water Initiative, Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah Department of Water Resources, USDA-ARS Forage & Range Research Laboratory. TARGET AUDIENCES: Crop producers, water resource managers, extension personnel, water distribution, homeowners, professional landscape managers, plant nursery businesses. Focus of our efforts are in Utah, but impacts the entire Intermountain West region. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
The Utah Energy Balance Model has been extended to include parameterizations that represent the effect of vegetation on the accumulation and melting of snow. This helps understand how vegetation and snow interacts and how to better quantify and model the snow accumulation and melt over heterogeneous watersheds to contribute to improving water supply prediction. Development of a salinity screening/evaluation system and a field salinity mapping device which will enable rigorous evaluation of plant responses and agronomic field conditions. Http://danielforest.usu.edu/ was established with information on the T.W. Daniel Experimental Forest Instrumented site as well as data download capability. We post real-time weather data on the main page for the public who are interested in weather conditions in the mountains. The site received 82 visits in the first 70 days with over 480 page views. An MS student involved in the soil salinity part of the project published their thesis at Utah State University entitled, Salinity Inventory and Tolerance Screening in Utah. They also published a refereed journal article. Progress made on 3 M.S. theses and 1 Ph.D. dissertation. Development of models of human behavior related to water use in managed urban landscapes which will enable communities to better analyze water use patterns and direct water conservation efforts to locations with the greatest capacity to conserve. Investigation of water sources for wetlands and vulnerabilities to drought. Identification of exceptional accessions of native trees will benefit the nursery industry and increase landscape water conservation. Improvements in propagation will facilitate future introductions and provide alternative methods to produce own-rooted maples. Better understanding drought response strategies of both species, particularly mulberry as a potentially anisohydric species that has high water use with the potential for extreme collapse when its water stress limits are exceeded, versus sweetgum as an isohydric species that is more conservative in its water use and while more sensitive to drought, and more likely to tolerate mild to moderate drought. Water balances for the landscape lysimeters were developed and the Hydrus-1D model was used to simulate the water balances and relate them to measured soil moisture data. The water balances and simulations led to the discovery of differences in water use of the plant classes (trees, turfgrass, and perennials) depending on the landscape category (traditional, native/adapted, or intermediate). In addition, canopy cover of plant materials in the landscapes was found to have a linear relationship to actual evapotranspiration of the plants. In fact, canopy cover, rather than plant species, was found to be the controlling factor in overall landscape water use in the study.
Publications
- Wang, S.-Y., R. R. Gillies, J. Jin, and L. E. Hipps, 2009. Recent rainfall cycle in the Intermountain Region as a quadrature amplitude modulation from the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L02705.
- Wang, S.-Y., R. R. Gillies, L. E. Hipps, and J. Jin, 2010. A transition-phase teleconnection of the Pacific quasi-decadal oscillation, Clim Dynamics, doi: 10.1007/s00382-009-0722-5.
- Endter-Wada, J. 2009. Social Aspects of Water Delivery. Newsletter of the Cache Valley Water Users Association and the Utah Association of Conservation Districts. Special Edition, March 2009.
- Endter-Wada, J., T. Selfa, and L. Welsh. 2009. Hydrologic Interdependencies and Human Cooperation: The Process of Adapting to Droughts. Weather, Climate and Society 1(1):55-71.
- Gillies, R. R. and S.-Y. Wang. 2009: The Pacific QDO as a natural predictor for the Great Salt Lake elevation, NOAA National Weather Service, Climate Prediction Science & Technology Digest, December 2009.
- Wang, S.-Y., R. R. Gillies, E. S. Takle, and W. J. Gutowski Jr., 2009: Evaluation of precipitation in the Intermountain Region simulated by the NARCCAP regional climate models. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L11704.
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Progress 07/01/08 to 06/30/11
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The Utah Energy Balance Model has been extended to include parameterizations that represent the effect of vegetation on the accumulation and melting of snow. The enhanced canopy components were included into the Utah Energy Balance Snowmelt model and provide improved capability to predict the surface water input and runoff from snowmelt in heterogeneous watersheds using a parsimonious approach that can be used with practically available information. A postdoc, Masaru Sakai, published a theoretical evaluation of the Penta-needle Heat Pulse Probe's (PHPP) ability to provide estimates of subsurface evaporation. Additional applications include estimation of subsurface water flux, measurement of soil heat flux and monitoring of soil temperature, soil salinity and estimated soil water content. We developed a salinity screening/evaluation system and a field salinity mapping device which rigorous evaluates plant responses and agronomic field conditions. A website was established with information on the T.W. Daniel Experimental Forest Instrumented site as well as data download capability. We post real-time weather data on the main page for the public who are interested in weather conditions in the mountains. 3 M.S. theses and 1 Ph.D. dissertation in relation to the development of models of human behavior related to water use in managed urban landscapes which will enable communities to better analyze water use patterns and direct water conservation efforts to locations with the greatest capacity to conserve. Investigation of water sources for wetlands and vulnerabilities to drought. We identified 56 selections of bigtooth maple for potential introduction into the nursery trade as water conserving, small landscape trees. Six have been selected based on fall color, overall aesthetics, and function. Further, softwood cuttings of clones can be successfully rooted by using a combination of etiolation, hedging, and rooting hormones. The initial group of grafted material was shipped to Utah in the spring of 2011 for further evaluation. Better understanding drought response strategies of both species, particularly mulberry as a potentially anisohydric species that has high water use with the potential for extreme collapse when its water stress limits are exceeded, versus sweetgum as an isohydric species that is more conservative in its water use and while more sensitive to drought, and more likely to tolerate mild to moderate drought. Water balances for the landscape lysimeters were developed and the Hydrus-1D model was used to simulate the water balances and relate them to measured soil moisture data. The water balances and simulations led to the discovery of differences in water use of the plant classes (trees, turfgrass, and perennials) depending on the landscape category (traditional, native/adapted, or intermediate). In addition, canopy cover of plant materials in the landscapes was found to have a linear relationship to actual evapotranspiration of the plants. In fact, canopy cover-rather than plant species-was found to be the controlling factor in overall landscape water use in the study. PARTICIPANTS: Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Utah Climate Center, Center For Water Efficient Landscaping, Utah Botanical Center, College of Natural Resources, USU Water Initiative, Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah Department of Water Resources, USDA-ARS Forage & Range Research Laboratory. TARGET AUDIENCES: Crop producers, water resource managers, extension personnel, water distribution, homeowners, professional landscape managers, plant nursery businesses. Focus of our efforts are in Utah, but impacts the entire Intermountain West region. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Not relevant to this project.
Impacts
Urban areas in Utah and the Intermountain West will encounter periodic and long-term water shortages due to a highly variable climate creating limited water supplies and population growth. On the water source side, our work was targeted to minimize error in water yield estimates through improved climate and hydrological data and to identify precipitation cycles in the Intermountain West that improves water supply forecasting. The TW Daniel Experimental Forest site now provides the most comprehensive measurement site found in Utah. Combined with measurements from the adjacent SNOTEL site, year-round monitoring of snow, soil and climatic properties and processes are available within four of the most dominant plant regimes found in mountains of the Western US. At that site, a PhD student's work is improving the snow components of a hydrologic model to better forecast snow accumulation and melt as it relates to vegetation. A provisional patent was filed to protect intellectual property developed under the DMP related to computational algorithms used in the penta needle heat pulse probe. Our work on water-use in landscapes addresses short-term improvements of irrigation management and long-term improvements in the identification and production of water conserving plant materials. To address short term issues, more than 700 water checks in 2008 (a representative year) at residences and businesses are an unparalleled outreach tool to make USDA and collaborative entities' efforts more visible and directly impact citizens. The combination of eddy covariance measurements and calculated ET values will allow landscape managers to accurately estimate "crop" coefficient values for ET for the most efficient landscape irrigation scheduling. The use of canopy cover, or area covered by landscape plants, rather than plant type or water use classification, is a key determinant of overall landscape water use and has far-reaching implications. In addition to the immediate adaptation of educational and Cooperative Extension materials related to landscape water conservation, a simplified approach to landscape irrigation has been developed for the use of agencies, municipalities, landscape managers, and individuals to achieve meaningful levels of landscape water conservation. After multiple years of preparatory research, we are on the cusp of being able to evaluate bigtooth maple as a small, drought tolerant landscape tree and to provide local growers with information on how to successfully propagate selected accessions. The potential impact of this will be improved landscape water conservation for the general public, and a potential new crop for Utah nurserymen. Work in soil salinity will allow agricultural irrigators to better use water supplies to prevent salinization of soils. Development of a salinity evaluation system and a field salinity mapping device will enable rigorous evaluation of plant responses and field conditions. The overarching theme of the policy and social science component the project is to understand how water can be used most efficiently and vulnerability to drought can be mitigated through various human-environmental adaptations.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 07/01/09 to 06/30/10
Outputs
OUTPUTS: Data collection and analysis activities related to urban water conservation to mitigate drought, water sources for wetlands and vulnerabilities to drought, and watershed-based policies and procedures to mitigate drought Screening of local bigtooth maple (Acer grandidentatum) populations via Google Earth, aerial photography, interviews, and on-ground searches has been done. Out of 65 trees selected for further review, 11 have been chosen for in-depth evaluation and several are being evaluated commercially under a material transfer agreement. Ten of the 11 trees have been propagated in a nursery environment for further study and evaluation of marketability. An MS student funded by the project completed their degree, and a PhD student partially funded by the project began the research phase of their degree. Detailed maps of soil salinity produced under the project for 35 agricultural fields in Northern Utah, contributed to the regional-scale determination of the extent and severity of soil salinity in Cache County, Utah within the Bear River Basin. Hundreds of soil samples were obtained at depth from each field and will be used for detailed soil physical and chemical property determination and the calibration of remote sensors used to map soil properties. A large-scale, drainage lysimeter project was designed to develop water balances for ornamental landscapes differing only in plant material utilized. The actual water use of different classes of plant material (trees, turfgrass, and perennials) in the study was compared to modeled water use determined with the Hydrus-1D hydrologic model of water flow and solute transport. Actual water use was determined by monitoring leachate and irrigation volumes in combination with soil moisture. Canopy cover of plant materials and leachate water quality in the landscapes were also measured over time. Gillies, R. R., S.-Y. Wang, and W.-R. Huang, Changes of winter precipitation regime in China over the past half century. AGU Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting, Taipei, Taiwan, 22-25 June, 2010. Ingram, H. and J. Endter-Wada. 2009. Frames and ways of knowing: Key considerations for policy responses to climate risk and vulnerability. Proceedings of the Seventh International Science Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IHDP Open Meeting 2009), Bonn, Germany, April 26-30, 2009. Mahat, V. and D. G. Tarboton, (2010), "Modeling the effect of vegetation on the accumulation and melting of snow," Water Across Interfaces, CUAHSI's Second Biennial Science Meeting, Boulder, Colorado, July 19-21, p.Pst-1, http://www.cuahsi.org/biennial2010/docs/CUAHSI-Biennial2010-MeetingPr ogram.pdf. Sun, H. , K. Kopp. ,Dietz, M., Jones, S. and J., Fan. 2010. A Comprehensive Research Method to Investigate the Environmental Issues of Urban Landscapes--Water Use and Nitrogen Leaching of Urban Landscapes on Community Water Quantity and Quality. HortScience 45(8):S97. (Abstr.) Sun, H. and K. Kopp. 2010. Developing Water Balances of Ornamental Landscapes. HortScience 45(8):S263. (Abstr.) PARTICIPANTS: Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Utah Climate Center, Center For Water Efficient Landscaping, Utah Botanical Center, College of Natural Resources, USU Water Initiative, Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah Department of Water Resources, USDA-ARS Forage & Range Research Laboratory. TARGET AUDIENCES: Crop producers, water resource managers, extension personnel, water distribution, homeowners, professional landscape managers, plant nursery businesses. Focus of our efforts are in Utah, but impacts the entire Intermountain West region. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Not relevant to this project.
Impacts
The Utah Energy Balance Model has been extended to include parameterizations that represent the effect of vegetation on the accumulation and melting of snow. This helps understand how vegetation and snow interacts and how to better quantify and model the snow accumulation and melt over heterogeneous watersheds to contribute to improving water supply prediction. Development of a salinity screening/evaluation system and a field salinity mapping device which will enable rigorous evaluation of plant responses and agronomic field conditions. Http://danielforest.usu.edu/ was established with information on the T.W. Daniel Experimental Forest Instrumented site as well as data download capability. We post real-time weather data on the main page for the public who are interested in weather conditions in the mountains. The site received 82 visits in the first 70 days with over 480 page views. An MS student involved in the soil salinity part of the project published their thesis at Utah State University entitled, Salinity Inventory and Tolerance Screening in Utah. They also published a refereed journal article. Progress made on 3 M.S. theses and 1 Ph.D. dissertation. Development of models of human behavior related to water use in managed urban landscapes which will enable communities to better analyze water use patterns and direct water conservation efforts to locations with the greatest capacity to conserve. Investigation of water sources for wetlands and vulnerabilities to drought. Identification of exceptional accessions of native trees will benefit the nursery industry and increase landscape water conservation. Improvements in propagation will facilitate future introductions and provide alternative methods to produce own-rooted maples. Better understanding drought response strategies of both species, particularly mulberry as a potentially anisohydric species that has high water use with the potential for extreme collapse when its water stress limits are exceeded, versus sweetgum as an isohydric species that is more conservative in its water use and while more sensitive to drought, and more likely to tolerate mild to moderate drought. Water balances for the landscape lysimeters were developed and the Hydrus-1D model was used to simulate the water balances and relate them to measured soil moisture data. The water balances and simulations led to the discovery of differences in water use of the plant classes (trees, turfgrass, and perennials) depending on the landscape category (traditional, native/adapted, or intermediate). In addition, canopy cover of plant materials in the landscapes was found to have a linear relationship to actual evapotranspiration of the plants. In fact, canopy cover, rather than plant species, was found to be the controlling factor in overall landscape water use in the study.
Publications
- Endter-Wada, J., T. Selfa, and L. Welsh. 2009. Hydrologic Interdependencies and Human Cooperation: The Process of Adapting to Droughts. Weather, Climate and Society 1(1):55-71.
- Endter-Wada, Joanna. 2009. Social Aspects of Water Delivery. Newsletter of the Cache Valley Water Users Association and the Utah Association of Conservation Districts. Special Edition, March 2009.
- Gillies, R. R. and S.-Y. Wang, 2009: The Pacific QDO as a natural predictor for the Great Salt Lake elevation, NOAA National Weather Service, Climate Prediction Science & Technology Digest, December 2009.
- Wang, S.-Y., R. R. Gillies, E. S. Takle, and W. J. Gutowski Jr., 2009. Evaluation of precipitation in the Intermountain Region simulated by the NARCCAP regional climate models. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L11704.
- Wang, S.-Y., R. R. Gillies, J. Jin, and L. E. Hipps, 2009. Recent rainfall cycle in the Intermountain Region as a quadrature amplitude modulation from the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L02705.
- Wang, S.-Y., R. R. Gillies, L. E. Hipps, and J. Jin, 2010. A transition-phase teleconnection of the Pacific quasi-decadal oscillation, Clim Dynamics, doi: 10.1007/s00382-009-0722-5.
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Progress 07/01/08 to 06/30/09
Outputs
OUTPUTS: Wet and dry cycles in the Intermountain West are related to temporal changes in ocean temperature patterns in the Pacific. Instrumentation and measurement system at the TW Daniels experimental site was upgraded to provide more detailed spatial soil property information. Set up load cell system connected to dataloggers; fully automated and will be able to collect water use data on all treatments in 2009. Conducted 700 water checks in the Salt Lake City area during 2008. Along with the state Division of Water Resources developed a billing data module to work with the water check data. Completed collection of Sphaeralcea species throughout Utah and collections of Shepherdia rotundifolia along an elevational gradient (to be used in investigations of genetic and physiological adaptations of the species to diverse habitats). Selected 20 trees in natural stands for fall color using aerial photography, ground-truthed, and initiated propagation. Eddy covariance measurements were also made over stressed stands of turf together with foliage temperature, soil water potential, stomatal conductance and spectral reflectance of visible and near infrared radiation. Plots at the Utah Botanical Center were re-instrumented with more accurate soil moisture sensors in greater numbers, a leachate collection system and a data logging system for collecting leachate volume data. The salinity screening system developed in UTA 550 is being modified for screening trees. Peach rootstocks originally selected under saline conditions and high pH were being prepared for salinity treatments in 2008 to test actual performance. A graduate student was identified to conduct salinity mapping of agricultural soils in the Sevier River basin. Analyses of Logan Water Check Program data from 2007 is nearly complete and will be related to earlier data. PARTICIPANTS: Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Utah Climate Center, Center For Water Efficient Landscaping, Utah Botanical Center, College of Natural Resources, USU Water Initiative, Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah Department of Water Resources, USDA-ARS Forage & Range Research Laboratory. TARGET AUDIENCES: Crop producers, water resource managers, extension personnel, water distribution, homeowners, professional landscape managers, plant nursery businesses. Focus of our efforts are in Utah, but impacts the entire Intermountain West region. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
Urban areas in Utah and the Intermountain West will encounter periodic and long-term water shortages due to a highly variable climate creating limited water supplies and population growth. Our work is targeted to minimize error in water yield estimates through improved climate and hydrological data. Our work to identify precipitation cycles in the Intermountain West improves water supply forecasting. The TW Daniel Experimental Forest site now provides the most comprehensive measurement site found in Utah. Combined with measurements from the adjacent SNOTEL site, year-round monitoring of snow, soil and climatic properties and processes are available within four of the most dominant plant regimes found in mountains of the Western US. At that site, a PhD student's work is improving the snow components of a hydrologic model to better forecast snow accumulation and melt as it relates to vegetation. Our work on water-use in landscapes addresses short-term improvements of irrigation management and long-term improvements in the identification and production of water conserving plant materials. To address short term issues, more than 700 water checks in 2008 at residences and businesses are an unparalleled outreach tool to make USDA and collaborative entities' efforts more visible and directly impact citizens. Improvement in the ability to work with the data will speed up the release of information. The combination of eddy covariance measurements and calculated ET values will allow landscape managers to accurately estimate "crop" coefficient values for ET for the most efficient landscape irrigation scheduling. For the native tree species, we have already established private industry collaboration. Finally, work in soil salinity will allow agricultural irrigators to better use water supplies to prevent salinization of soils. Development of a salinity evaluation system and a field salinity mapping device will enable rigorous evaluation of plant responses and field conditions. The overarching theme of the policy and social science component the project is to understand how water can be used most efficiently and vulnerability to drought can be mitigated through various human-environmental adaptations.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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