Hydrological assessment of proposed reservoirs in the Sonora River Basin, Mexico, under historical and future climate scenarios

Robles-Morúa, A.; Che, Daniel; Mayer, Alex; Vivoni, Enrique R.

doi:10.1080/02626667.2013.878462

Cited by 23 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…For example, drier winter conditions and a more intense summer monsoon under climate change, as suggested by Robles‐Morua et al . [] for Sonora, might promote a stronger carbon sink in TDF ecosystems. In such a case, the drier antecedent winter conditions would suppress ecosystem respiration, primarily from microbial decomposition, in the early part of the growing season, while the wetter summer would promote a longer carbon fixation period.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variations of net ecosystem production due to seasonal precipitation differences in a tropical dry forest of northwest Mexico

et al. 2015

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Due to their large extent and high primary productivity, tropical dry forests (TDF) are important contributors to atmospheric carbon exchanges in subtropical and tropical regions. In northwest Mexico, a bimodal precipitation regime that includes winter precipitation derived from Pacific storms and summer precipitation from the North American monsoon (NAM) couples water availability with ecosystem processes. We investigated the net ecosystem production of a TDF ecosystem using a 4.5 year record of water and carbon fluxes obtained from the eddy covariance method complemented with remotely sensed data. We identified a large CO2 efflux at the start of the summer season that is strongly related to the preceding winter precipitation and greenness. Since this CO2 efflux occurs prior to vegetation green‐up, we infer that respiration is mainly due to decomposition of soil organic matter accumulated from the prior growing season. Overall, ecosystem respiration has an important effect on the net ecosystem production but can be overwhelmed by the strength of the primary productivity during the NAM. Precipitation characteristics during NAM have significant controls on sustaining carbon fixation in the TDF into the fall season. We identified that a threshold of ~350 to 400 mm of monsoon precipitation leads to a switch in the annual carbon balance in the TDF ecosystem from a net source (+102 g C/m2/yr) to a net sink (−249 g C/m2/yr). This monsoonal precipitation threshold is typically exceeded one out of every 2 years. The close coupling of winter and summer periods with respect to carbon fluxes suggests that the annual carbon balance is dependent on precipitation amounts in both seasons in TDF ecosystems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variations of net ecosystem production due to seasonal precipitation differences in a tropical dry forest of northwest Mexico

et al. 2015

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“…The RSB is a north-south oriented watershed (21 264 km 2 ) with mean annual precipitation ranging from 350 to 700 mm (Hallack-Alegria and Watkins, 2007) of which 40 to 70% falls during the NAM from July to September . The mountainous terrain within the RSB exhibits a relief of more than 2000 m, leading to spatial heterogeneities in soil texture and vegetation distributions in the basin (e.g., Robles-Morua et al, 2015;Xiang et al, 2017). Prior land surface modeling studies have built a solid foundation on the simulation of hydrologic and ecosystems processes in the RSB (e.g., Vivoni et al, 2010;Robles-Morua et al, 2012;Xiang et al, 2014;Mascaro et al, 2015) allowing for the detailed coupled land-atmosphere modeling experiments conducted in this work.…”

Section: Study Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of initial soil moisture and vegetation conditions on monsoon precipitation events in northwest México

Xiang

Vivoni

Gochis

2018

Atm

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RESUMENLas condiciones de la superficie del suelo, incluyendo el estado de la humedad y la vegetación, desempeñan funciones importantes en el desarrollo de la capa límite diurna y la formación de precipitación convectiva. En áreas con fases estacionales de radiación y precipitación, tales como la región del monzón de Norteamérica (NAM, por sus siglas en inglés), es difícil ofrecer un diagnóstico de la contribución de cada fenómeno por separado, dada la concurrencia de humedad del suelo elevada y el reverdecimiento de la vegetación durante la temporada cálida. En el presente estudio, se utilizó el sistema de modelación WRF-Hydro para simular las interacciones entre la superficie del suelo y la atmósfera en una amplia cuenca del noroeste de México sujeta a la influencia del NAM. Después de comparar las simulaciones acopladas con un producto de reanálisis con corrección de sesgo correspondiente a dos periodos de verano en 2014 y 2013, se llevó a cabo una serie de experimentos de modelación a escala de tormenta que modifican de forma independiente las condiciones iniciales de humedad del suelo y vegetación. Los resultados muestran que las anomalías de ambas variables pueden favorecer la precipitación convectiva, aunque su influencia en el desarrollo de la capa límite es diverso. Posteriormente se hizo un diagnóstico de los mecanismos suelo-atmósfera mediante los cuales los estados de humedad del suelo favorecen la precipitación convectiva. En presencia de anomalías importantes de la superficie del suelo, como humedad inicial igual a la capacidad de campo o el estado máximo de verdor de la vegetación, la precipitación acumulada (48 h) a escala de tormenta puede incrementarse hasta 26 mm. Como resultado, los avances en la forma en que pueden inicializarse las condiciones de la superficie del suelo, ya sea mediante percepción remota o a través de una red de sensores, es fundamental para mejorar los sistemas de pronóstico de precipitaciones en la región del NAM. ABSTRACTLand surface conditions including soil moisture and vegetation states are expected to play important roles in the development of the daytime boundary layer and the formation of convective precipitation. For areas with an in-phase seasonality of radiation and precipitation, such as the North American Monsoon (NAM) region, diagnosing the direct contributions of each effect is difficult given the co-occurrence of high soil moisture and vegetation greening during the warm season. In this study, we use the WRF-Hydro modeling system to simulate the interactions between the land surface and atmosphere within a large watershed in northwest México subject to the influence of the NAM. After testing the coupled simulations against a bias-corrected reanalysis product for two summer periods in 2004 and 2013, we conduct a series of storm-scale modeling experiments that separately vary the initial soil moisture and vegetation conditions. Results reveal that both soil moisture and vegetation anomalies can positively affect convective precipitation, although their influe...

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“…Furthermore, the WRF downscaling of the HadCM3 model underestimated precipitation substantially during the historical period as compared to the NLDAS product, consistent with Castro et al (2012) and Robles-Morua et al (2015). Applying a bias correction derived in the historical period (i.e., based on comparisons to regional data)…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While prior studies have focused on the winter season (e.g., Christensen et al 2004;Seager et al 2007), relatively little is known regarding the regional vulnerability to changes in the summertime North American monsoon (NAM). Cook and Seager (2013) indicate the possibility of a delay in NAM timing (typically from July to September), while Serrat-Capdevila et al (2013), Bukovsky et al (2013) and Robles-Morua et al (2015) found increases in NAM precipitation from a range of different climate projections. The implications of a change in the NAM are of regional interest, in particular for downstream water managers who might need to adapt operations and infrastructure to handle variations in the bimodal precipitation regime.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can help improve the reliability of climate simulations in regions with fine-scale features such as rugged terrain, water bodies or land cover differences (Castro et al 2007, leading to more realistic precipitation fields. Similarly, the use of coarse hydrologic models in climate change assessments limits their ability to resolve the finescale meteorological forcing and watershed properties that control hydrologic responses, in particular during the NAM (e.g., Ellis et al 2008;Serrat-Capdevila et al 2013, Robles-Morua et al 2015. Distributed hydrologic models, on the other hand, have a wider appeal for climate change impact studies due to their ability to provide insight on the spatial and temporal details of the rainfall-runoff transformation (e.g., Xu andSingh 2004, Kampf andBurges 2007) In this study, we conduct high resolution (~120 m, hourly) hydrologic projections for summer conditions in a semiarid watershed of central Arizona.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A climate change projection for summer hydrologic conditions in a semiarid watershed of central Arizona

Hawkins

Vivoni

Robles-Morúa

et al. 2015

Journal of Arid Environments

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Potential climate change impacts on summer precipitation and subsequent hydrologic responses in the southwestern U.S. are poorly constrained at present due to a lack of studies accounting for high resolution processes. In this investigation, we apply a distributed hydrologic model to the Beaver Creek watershed of central Arizona to explore its utility for climate change assessments. Manual model calibration and model validation were performed using radar-based precipitation data during three summers and compared to two alternative meteorological products to illustrate the sensitivity of the streamflow response. Using the calibrated and Nevertheless, relatively minor changes were obtained in spatially-averaged evapotranspiration.To explain this, we used the simulated hydroclimatological mechanisms to identify that higher precipitation limits radiation through cloud cover leading to lower evapotranspiration in regions with orographic effects. This challenges conventional wisdom on evapotranspiration trends and suggest that a more nuanced approach is needed to communicate hydrologic vulnerability to stakeholders and decision-makers in this semiarid region.

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Hydrological assessment of proposed reservoirs in the Sonora River Basin, Mexico, under historical and future climate scenarios

Cited by 23 publications

References 49 publications

Variations of net ecosystem production due to seasonal precipitation differences in a tropical dry forest of northwest Mexico

Variations of net ecosystem production due to seasonal precipitation differences in a tropical dry forest of northwest Mexico

Influence of initial soil moisture and vegetation conditions on monsoon precipitation events in northwest México

A climate change projection for summer hydrologic conditions in a semiarid watershed of central Arizona

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