Studies in mountainous terrain related to ecology and hydrology often use interpolated climate products because of a lack of local observations. One data set frequently used to develop plot‐to‐watershed‐scale climatologies is PRISM (Parameter‐elevation Regression on Independent Slopes Model) temperature. Benefits of this approach include geographically weighted station observations and topographic positioning modifiers, which become important factors for predicting temperature in complex topography. Because of the paucity of long‐term climate records in mountain environments, validation of PRISM algorithms across diverse regions remains challenging, with end users instead relying on atmospheric relationships derived in sometimes distant geographic settings. Presented here are results from testing observations of daily temperature maximum (TMAX) and minimum (TMIN) on 16 sites in the Walker Basin, California‐Nevada, located on open woodland slopes ranging from 1967 to 3111 m in elevation. Individual site mean absolute error varied from 1.1 to 3.7°C with better performance observed during summertime as opposed to winter. We observed a consistent cool bias in TMIN for all seasons across all sites, with cool bias in TMAX varying with season. Model error for TMIN was associated with elevation, whereas model error for TMAX was associated with topographic radiative indices (solar exposure and heat loading). These results demonstrate that temperature conditions across mountain woodland slopes are more heterogeneous than interpolated models (such as PRISM) predict, that drivers of these differences are complex and localized in nature, and that scientific application of atmospheric/climate models in mountains requires additional attention to model assumptions and source data.
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The ability to evaluate accurately the response of the environment to climate change ideally involves long‐term continuous in situ measurements of climate and landscape processes. This is the goal of the Nevada Climate‐Ecohydrology Assessment Network (NevCAN), a novel system of permanent monitoring stations located across elevational and latitudinal gradients within the Great Basin hydrographic region (Figure 1). NevCAN was designed, first, to quantify the daily, seasonal, and interannual variability in climate that occurs from basin valleys to mountain tops of the Great Basin in the arid southwest of the United States; second, to relate the temporal patterns of ecohydrologic response to climate occurring within each of the major ecosystems that compose the Great Basin; and, last, to monitor changes in climate that modulate water availability, sequestration of carbon, and conservation of biological diversity.
Abstract. In the Great Basin region of western North America, records of past climate and wildfire variability are needed not only for fire use, but also for understanding the mechanisms behind the centurylong expansion of piñon-juniper woodlands. The Mt. Irish area (Lincoln County, south-eastern Nevada) is a remote mountain ecosystem on the hydrographic boundary between the Great Basin and the Colorado River Basin. Non-scarred ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa C. Lawson var. scopulorum Engelm.) and singleneedle pinyons (Pinus monophylla Torr. & Frém.) were used to develop a tree-ring reconstruction of drought (mean PDSI for May-July from NV Climate Division 3) from 1396 to 2003. A hypothetical fire regime was obtained from the PDSI reconstruction and from explicitly assumed relationships between climate and wildfire occurrence. A census of fire-scarred trees was then sampled at the study area, and crossdated firescar records were used to generate the fire history, independently of the pre-existing pyroclimatic model. Out of 250 collected fire-scar wood sections, 197 could be crossdated (about 89% from ponderosa pines), covered the period from 1146 to 2006, and contained 485 fire scars, 390 of which could be dated to a single year. Numerical summaries were computed for the period 1550-2006, when recorder trees ranged from 16 to 169, using a total of 360 fire scars on 176 sections. Up to 1860, the time of Euro-American settlement, fires that scarred at least two trees were very frequent (minimum fire interval: 1 year, mean: 4, median: 2, Weibull median: 3, maximum: 19), while fires that scarred at least 10% of the recorder trees were relatively rare (minimum fire interval: 40 years, mean: 66, median: 50, Weibull median: 63, maximum: 123). Fire frequency remained high during the 1780-1840 period, when fire was reduced or absent in other areas of the western United States. Both the ''expected'' and the ''observed'' fire history showed lower fire frequency after Euro-American settlement, which most likely displaced Native people and any deliberate use of fire, but did not introduce publicly organized suppression in the area. Therefore, less favorable climatic conditions, not post-settlement fire management, were responsible for reduced wildfire occurrence in the modern era.
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