Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWATER): Scientific Objectives and Experimental Design

Abstract

A major research plan entitled “Integrated research on the ecohydrological process of the Heihe River Basin” was launched by the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2010. One of the key aims of this research plan is to establish a research platform that integrates observation, data management, and model simulation to foster twenty-first-century watershed science in China. Based on the diverse needs of interdisciplinary studies within this research plan, a program called the Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWATER) was implemented. The overall objective of HiWATER is to improve the observability of hydrological and ecological processes, to build a world-class watershed observing system, and to enhance the applicability of remote sensing in integrated ecohydrological studies and water resource management at the basin scale. This paper introduces the background, scientific objectives, and experimental design of HiWATER. The instrumental setting and airborne mission plans are also outlined. The highlights are the use of a flux observing matrix and an eco-hydrological wireless sensor network to capture multiscale heterogeneities and to address complex problems, such as heterogeneity, scaling, uncertainty, and closing water cycle at the watershed scale. HiWATER was formally initialized in May 2012 and will last four years until 2015. Data will be made available to the scientific community via the Environmental and Ecological Science Data Center for West China. International scientists are welcome to participate in the field campaign and use the data in their analyses.

Evaluation of multiple forcing data sets for precipitation and shortwave radiation over major land areas of China

“…Shortwave radiation data from CERN are provided by the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network through http://cerndis1.cern.ac.cn/data/meta?id=17046 (Su et al, 2005). Shortwave radiation data from HiWATER are provided by Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWATER; Li et al, 2013), and users can download the data from http://www.heihedata.org/data/. Shortwave radiation data from TPE are provided by the Third Pole Environment Database (https://doi.org/10.11888/AtmosphericPhysics.tpe.62.db and https://doi.org/10.11888/Hydrology.tpe.249426.db).…”

Ecohydrological effects of stream–aquifer water interaction: a case study of the Heihe River basin, northwestern China

“…Each simulation covered a period of an entire hydrological year from 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2013 using a time step of 1800 s. The models were run at the five sections to simulate both sides of the river within a distance of 3000 m from the river channel using a horizontal resolution of 60 m. As with the sensitivity tests, atmospheric forcing data were used from CLDAS as developed by NMIC. However, instead of using the default surface data set of CLM4.5 (Oleson et al, 2013), we replaced the data of elevation, terrain slope maximum and fractional saturated area with the ASTER DEM data set (30 m resolution, Hirano et al, 2003;Li et al, 2011), land cover data with MICLCover (1 km resolution, Ran et al 2012), plus HiWATER Land Cover Map (30 m resolution, Li et al, 2013), and soil data with the China soil characteristics data set (1 km resolution, Shangguan et al, 2012). The soil types and vegetation types over both sides of the selected sections are shown in Table 2.…”

“…The boundary conditions of river water levels (h r ) for the five sections were obtained from the data set of the hydrometeorological observation network, which is operated by Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWA-TER, Li et al, 2013;Liu et al, 2014). The observations covered all time periods of our simulations with a time interval of 1800 s. First, the TEST and CTL were started from the default initial condition of CLM4.5 (seen in Oleson et al, 2013) and run for 700 years under each configuration (with and without stream-aquifer water interaction), cyclically using the atmospheric forcing and observed water level data.…”

“…Next, we tested our results from the realistic simulation (TEST) using observed data. First, we used observation data from the eddy covariance (EC) and automatic weather station (AWS) system of the Bajitan Gobi Desert station (Liu et al, 2011;Li et al, 2013), a part of hydrometeorological observation network operated by HiWATER, to validate our simulation. The Bajitan Gobi Desert station is located at 100.3042 • E, 38.9150 • N (displayed in Fig.…”

Reconstruction of MODIS Spectral Reflectance under Cloudy-Sky Condition

“…It contains various types of ecosystems and land cover, making it an ideal natural watershed for comprehensive research in hydrology, phenology, and climate ( Figure 2). Hence, this region was selected as the study area because numerous scientific experiments have been conducted in the region, providing sufficient remote sensing data and ground measurements for our study [24,25]. Moreover, our team has also conducted considerable research and we have a deeper understanding of this region.…”