Source: MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY submitted to NRP
SOIL, WATER, AND ENVIRONMENTAL PHYSICS ACROSS SCALES
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
HATCH
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1004262
Grant No.
(N/A)
Cumulative Award Amt.
(N/A)
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
W-3188
Project Start Date
Oct 1, 2014
Project End Date
Sep 30, 2019
Grant Year
(N/A)
Program Code
[(N/A)]- (N/A)
Recipient Organization
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
BOZEMAN,MT 59717
Performing Department
Land Resources & Environmental Sciences
Non Technical Summary
The research project is designed to understand how wheat rotation management impacts evapotranspiration, soil moisture, sensible heat flux (thermals), and carbon dioxide flux at the scale of a farmer's field using direct measurements, and at the watershed scale using remotesensing. Understanding how cropping system management impacts water resources is an important step toward understanding how to manage them more efficiently. Our measurements will improve our ability to measure soil moisture in the rooting zone at the scale of individual fields, and at the scale of entire watersheds.
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
70%
Applied
30%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
1020120107050%
1320430107050%
Knowledge Area
102 - Soil, Plant, Water, Nutrient Relationships; 132 - Weather and Climate;

Subject Of Investigation
0120 - Land; 0430 - Climate;

Field Of Science
1070 - Ecology;
Goals / Objectives
To improve our fundamental understanding of soil physical properties and processes, and how they interact with other environmental and biogeochemical processes across various spatial and temporal scales. To extend our knowledge of scale-appropriate methodologies to improve stakeholder-management of soil and water resources that benefit agricultural, natural resource and environmental sustainability.
Project Methods
We will continue to measure the impacts of wheat rotation management on surface-atmosphere water exchange and vadose zone water content at the field and watershed scale in a semi-arid region of central Montana. We installed an eddy covariance system over a winter wheat field in March, 2013 that is currently operational throughout the 2014 spring wheat growing season. We also installed a new eddy covariance tower in September, 2013 over a field that has transitioned from spring wheat to fallow, and measured throughout the growing season in the fallow treatment. We seek to continue these measurements as the fallow field transitions to winter wheat and the spring wheat field transitions to fallow. Both eddy covariance systems are comprised of a 3D sonic anemometer and fast response infrared gas analyzer mounted at 2 m on the 3 m tower. Associated micrometeorological measurements include incident and outgoing short and longwave radiation and thereby net radiation, soil moisture, soil temperature, soil heat flux, air temperature and relative humidity, incident and outgoing photosynthetically active radiation and thereby the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation, and near-surface wind speed in the case of the field transitioning to spring wheat. Data will be made publically available on http://sites.google.com/site/stoylab/data.Remote sensing data from Landsat 8 and the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellites have been obtained for the 2013 growing season and data collection efforts are ongoing. Radiation balance-based evapotranspiration estimates, including a critical analysis of uncertainty, are being created using the Landsat 8 data. We will validate evapotranspiration and soil moisture measurements from the satellite platforms using the field-scale observations and upscale to the watershed scale using these validated satellite products.Outreach efforts will be two-fold. First, we will continue to provide data and insight regarding our measurements to members of the Judith Basin Nitrogen Project (PI: Stephanie Ewing), who give frequent public presentations to producers. We are also creating a Google Maps-linked data portal of SMOS observations from Montana in conjunction with a project entitled 'Improving accessibility to satellite soil moisture measurements: Linking SMOS data retrievals to ground measurements in Montana' with the Montana Water Center. The goals of this project are to connect producers with publically-available (but difficult to obtain) remote sensing observations.

Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/19

Outputs
Target Audience: Nothing Reported Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? PD left the institution

Publications


    Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18

    Outputs
    Target Audience:The target audience for my contribution this project was largely academic scientists, but I did share relevant research results to water managers, natural resource managers, and non-governmental organizations. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The theme of the project provided additional opportunities to the postdoctoral research of Dr. Tobias Gerken and the graduate research of Gabriel Bromley. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Four peer-reviewed manuscripts were published in 2018 and I gave presentations on these topics to academic audiences as well as conference and invited presentations to land and water resource managers. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We are pursuing federal grants to further our research into soil-plant-atmosphere feedbacks that may serve as precursors to rapid-onset "flash" droughts .

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? With colleagues I published four manuscripts on different aspects of environmental physics including snowmelt processes, solar radiation attenuation through the atmosphere, the impacts of land management on convective precipitation likelihood, and drought forecasting.

    Publications

    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Oliphant AJ, Stoy PC (2018) An evaluation of semi-empirical models for partitioning photosynthetically active radiation into diffuse and direct beam components. Journal of Geophysical Research 123. DOI:10.1002/2017JG004370.
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC, Peitzsh E, Wood D, Rottinghaus D, Wohlfahrt G, Goulden M, Ward H (2018) On the exchange of sensible and latent heat between the atmosphere and melting snow. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 252: 167-174. DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2018.01.028.
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gerken T, Williams S, Bromley GT, Ruddell BL, Stoy PC (2018) Convective suppression before and during the United States Northern Great Plains flash drought of 2017. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 22: 41554163. DOI: 10.5194/hess-2018-211.
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gerken T, Bromley G, Stoy PC (2018) Surface moistening trends in the northern North American Great Plains increase the likelihood of convective initiation. Journal of Hydrometeorology 19: 227-244. DOI: 10.1175/JHM-D-17-0117.1.
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC, Ahmed S, Jarchow M, Rashford B, Swanson D, Albeke S, Bromley G, Brookshire ENJ, Dixon M, Haggerty J, Miller P, Peyton B, Royem A, Spangler L, Straub C, Poulter B (2018) Opportunities and tradeoffs among BECCS and the food, water, energy, biodiversity, and social systems nexus at regional scales. Bioscience 68: 100-111, DOI: 10.1093/biosci/bix145.
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Oliphant AJ, Stoy PC (2018) An Evaluation of Semi-Empirical Models for Partitioning Photosynthetically Active Radiation into Diffuse and Direct Beam Components. 33nd Conference on Agriculture and Forest Meteorology. American Meteorological Society. Boise, ID. May 2018.
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gerken T, Bromley G, Ruddell B, Stoy PC (2018) An Evaluation of Semi-Empirical Models for Investigating Land- Atmosphere Coupling and Convective Triggering in the North American Northern Great Plains. 33nd Conference on Agriculture and Forest Meteorology. American Meteorological Society. Boise, ID. May 2018
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC (2018) The role of land management in creating cooler and wetter conditions during May and June across the northern North American Great Plains. Montana Section of the American Water Resources Association Conference, West Yellowstone, MT. October 2018.
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC (2018) Convective suppression before and during the flash drought of 2017. Montana Section of the American Water Resources Association Conference, West Yellowstone, MT. October 2018.


    Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17

    Outputs
    Target Audience:Work resulted in scientific publications for researchers in academia and educational opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has contributed to the graduate research of Mallory Morgan, Adam Cook, and Gabriel Bromley, the undergraduate research of Bill Vandenberg, and the postdoctoral research of Dr. Tobias Gerken. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Project research has resulted in four publications in 2017 and five conference presentations including one by postdoctoral research associate Dr. Tobias Gerken. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We are excited about the opportunity to improve drought forecasting using metrics that indicate the suppression of convective precipitation. We plan to submit a manuscript shortly describing the anomalously dry (from the convective precipitation standpoint) atmosphere in the Northern Great Plains in Spring, 2017 that indicated that convective precipitation would be suppressed some two months before the U.S. Drought Monitor indicatd that the region was experiencing anomalous drought. By integrating atmospheric inference including surface-atmosphere coupling via surface conductance and soil moisture, we can better diagnose the likelihood of emerging drought and alert producers and stakeholders as early as possible if meteorological drought is occurring.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? We published a manuscript detailing how the convective precipitation system of the Northern Great Plains is in a transitional state between surface and atmospheric control during the early growing season, but under atmospheric control during the late growing season (Gerken et al., in press, Journal of Hydrometeorology). The implication of these findings is that soil moisture - through its impacts on surface conductance - plays a critical role in early season convective rain events.

    Publications

    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Fu Z, Dong J, Zhou Y, Stoy PC, Niu S (2017) Long term trend and interannual variability of land carbon uptakethe attribution and processes. Environmental Research Letters 12: 014018, DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aa5685.
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Gerken T, Ruddell BL, Fuentes JD, Ara�jo A, Brunsell NA, Maia J, Manzi A, Mercer J, Nascimento dos Santos R, von Randow C, Stoy PC (2017) Investigating the mechanisms responsible for the lack of eddy covariance energy balance closure in a central Amazonian tropical rainforest. Submitted to Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2017.03.023.
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Fu Z, Niu S, Luo Y, Niu S, Luo Y, Chen J, Montagnani L, Wohlfahrt G, Rahman AF, Rambal S, Bernhofer C, Shirkey G (2017) Climate controls over the net carbon uptake period and amplitude of net ecosystem production in temperate and boreal ecosystems. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 243: 9-18, DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2017.05.009.
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Niu S, Fu Z, Luo Y, Stoy PC, Keenan TF, Poulter B, Piao S, Zhou X, Zheng H, Han J, Wang Q, Zhang L, Yu G (2017) Interannual variability of ecosystem carbon exchange: From observation to prediction. Global Ecology and Biogeography 26:12251237, DOI: 10.1111/geb.12633.
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stoy PC, Ahmed S, Jarchow M, Rashford B, Swanson D, Albeke S, Bromley G, Brookshire ENJ, Dixon M, Haggerty J, Miller P, Peyton B, Royem A, Spangler L, Straub C, Poulter B (2018) Opportunities and tradeoffs among BECCS and the food, water, energy, biodiversity, and social systems nexus at regional scales. Bioscience, DOI 10.1093/biosci/bix145
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2018 Citation: Gerken T, Bromley G, Stoy PC (in print) Surface moistening trends in the northern North American Great Plains increase the likelihood of convective initiation. Journal of Hydrometeorology.
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: T Gerken, G Bromley, P Stoy. Investigating land-atmosphere coupling and convective triggering associated with the moistening of the northern North American Great Plains. EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts 19, 11160
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Paul Stoy, Gabriel Bromley, Tobias Gerken, Angela Tang, Mallory Morgan, David Wood, Selena Ahmed, Brad Bauer, Jack Brookshire, Julia Haggerty, Meghann Jarchow, Perry Miller, Brent Peyton, Ben Rashford, Lee Spangler, David Swanson, Suzi Taylor, Ben Poulter. 2017. Regional summer cooling from agricultural management practices that conserve soil carbon in the northern North American Great Plains EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts 19: 5362
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Paul C. Stoy, Tobias Gerken, Gabriel Bromley, Angela C.-I. Tang, Mallory M. Morgan, David Wood, Selena Ahmed, Brad Bauer, E.N.J. Brookshire, Julia H. Haggerty, Meghann Jarchow, Kent McVay, Perry Miller, Brent Peyton, Ben Rashford, Lee Spangler, David Swanson, Suzi Taylor, Jessica Torrion, Ben Poulter. 2016. Cooling Trends from Agricultural Management Practices that Conserve Soil Carbon Resources in the North American Northern Great Plains: Important First Steps in the Transition toward a BECCS Economy. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Paul C. Stoy, Tobias Gerken, Gabriel Bromley, Selena Ahmed, Shannon Albeke, Brad Bauer, E.N.J. Brookshire, Julia H. Haggerty, Meghann Jarchow, Perry Miller, Brent Peyton, Ben Rashford, Lee Spangler, David Swanson, Suzi Taylor, Ben Poulter. 2017. The food-water-energy-biodiversity-social systems nexus in the Upper Missouri River Basin: Agricultural intensification has led to regional summer cooling, but need it be at the expense of biodiversity? Ecological Society of America 2017 Annual Meeting
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Paul C. Stoy, Gabriel Bromley, Tobias Gerken, Bruce Maxwell, Kent McVay, Mallory M. Morgan, Ben Poulter, Scott Powell, Jessica Torrion, Aaron Wipf. 2017. Quantifying the role of Northern Great Plains agroecosystems in the emerging BECCS economy. 2017 Joint Ameriflux and North American Carbon Program Principal Investigators Meeting


    Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/16

    Outputs
    Target Audience:Work resulted in scientific publications for researchers in academia, public presentations for producers and water resource managers, and educational opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Project work has contributedto the graduate research of Mallory Morgan and Gabriel Bromley. Additional funding obtained with the help of initial project results has contributed to the graduate research of Gabriel Bromley and the postdoctoral research of Dr. Tobias Gerken, as well as an undergraduate research opportunity for Jamie Douglas and support for a part-time project technician, Dr. James Irvine.? How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Project work resulted in 2 publications that have a journal publication date of 2016, four conference presentations (with an additional four by graduate students in lab), and seven invited presentations including to the Montana Farm Bureau's 97th annual conference. Project work was also communicated to the public via press releases by Montana State University regarding the NSF CAREER award ''The role of ecosystem management on boundary layer development and precipitation in the Northern Plains' that is aligned with the present project. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Project work will continue to contribute to surface-atmosphere flux observations using the eddy covariance technique in dryland wheat/fallow and natural grassland ecosystems (with funding assistance from the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee and the National Science Foundation) and atmospheric boundary layer height observations via ceilometer (with funding assistance from the National Science Foundation) in order to better understand how agricultural management alters soil and environmental physics to influence atmospheric and climate processes.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? We linked soil and vegetation water flux to atmospheric boundary layer processes in Vick et al. (2016), which has provided a starting point to quantify the role of agricultural management practices away from summer fallow on regional climate (via the regional water and energy balances) in the northern North American Great Plains.

    Publications

    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Vick ESK, Stoy PC, Tang ACI, Gerken T (2016) The surface-atmosphere exchange of carbon dioxide, water, and sensible heat across a dryland wheat-fallow rotation. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. 232: 129-140. DOI: 10.1016/j.agee.2016.07.018.
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Xiao J, Liu S, Stoy PC (2016) Preface: Impacts of extreme climate events and disturbances on carbon dynamics. Biogeosciences 13 3665-3675. DOI:10.5194/bg-13-3665-2016.
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Stoy PC, Gerken T, Bromley G, Morgan M, Vick E. The role of agricultural management on the flux of water, carbon, and heat to and from Montana agroecosystems: Implications for precipitation processes. Montana Section of the American Water Resource Association Annual Meeting. Fairmont Hot Springs, MT, 2016.
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Paul Stoy, Elizabeth Vick, Tobias Gerken, Angela Tang, Mallory Morgan, Jessica Torrion, and Kent McVay. The Impact of Agricultural Land Use Changes on Surface-Atmosphere Exchange and Boundary Layer Processes in the Northern North American Great Plains. 32nd Conference on Agriculture and Forest Meteorology, 22nd Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence and Third Conference on Biogeosciences. American Meteorological Society. Salt Lake City. 2016.


    Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/15

    Outputs
    Target Audience:Target audiences included participants in W3188 'Soil and Environmental Physics Across Scales' with a talk presented at the annual meeting in January, 2015, academic audiences with the successful completion of a MS degree by project graduate student Elizabeth S. K. Vick, and academic colleagues and the publicby making project data publicly available. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Project work to date has contributed to the professional development of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences graduate student Elizabeth (Harris) Vick, as well as other graduate students (Aiden Johnson and Angela Tang) and lab guests (Dr. Lin Hua) who have contributed to fieldwork. Elizabeth Vick successfully defended her MS thesis on the impacts of a winter wheat - spring wheat - fallow sequence on surface-atmosphere water, energy, and carbon dioxide exchange. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Project work to date has resulted in a successful MS thesis at Montana State University with a publication soon to be submitted for an academic audience. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We anticipate publishing a paper in Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment that discusses the hydrological and edaphic impacts of the common winter wheat/spring wheat/fallow sequence common in the Judith Basin and other dryland wheat cropping areas of Montana, with opportunities for improving water resource and soil management. Project work will continue by investigating the effects of different agricultural treatments on atmospheric boundary layer development to explore the hypothesis that large-scale changes in agricultural management away from fallow have resulted in more precipitation and cooler temperatures in summer across the Northern Great Plains.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? Project work began in Fall, 2014. We observed the surface-atmosphere exchange of water and energy using two eddy covariance and micrometeorological stations located on neighboring spring wheat and fallow fields to quantify the impacts of agricultural management on water resources and environmental physics. We explored the ability of remote sensing platforms, namely Landsat, to measure surface temperature at a scale of 30 m in order to improve understanding of how agricultural and soil management influences physical characteristics of the land surface. We quantified the amount of water lost from soil to atmosphere as a consequence of crop and fallow management to provide insight into improving water resource management in a dryland cropping system.

    Publications

    • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2015 Citation: Vick, E.S.K., 2015. Surface-atmosphere exchange of carbon dioxide, water, and heat across a dryland wheat-fallow rotation. Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences. Montana State University.
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Stoy PC. (2015). The underappreciated role of soil physics in surface-atmosphere exchange and feedbacks. W3188: Soil, Water, and Environmental Physics Across Scales Annual Meeting. Las Vegas, NV.