Yosemite Hydroclimate Network: Distributed stream and atmospheric data for the Tuolumne River watershed and surroundings

Abstract

Regions of complex topography and remote wilderness terrain have spatially varying patterns of temperature and streamflow, but due to inherent difficulties of access, are often very poorly sampled. Here we present a data set of distributed stream stage, streamflow, stream temperature, barometric pressure, and air temperature from the Tuolumne River Watershed in Yosemite National Park, Sierra Nevada, California, USA, for water years 2002–2015, as well as a quality‐controlled hourly meteorological forcing time series for use in hydrologic modeling. We also provide snow data and daily inflow to the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir for 1970–2015. This paper describes data collected using low‐visibility and low‐impact installations for wilderness locations and can be used alone or as a critical supplement to ancillary data sets collected by cooperating agencies, referenced herein. This data set provides a unique opportunity to understand spatial patterns and scaling of hydroclimatic processes in complex terrain and can be used to evaluate downscaling techniques or distributed modeling. The paper also provides an example methodology and lessons learned in conducting hydroclimatic monitoring in remote wilderness.

Snowpack density modeling is the primary source of uncertainty when mapping basin‐wide SWE with lidar

“…The drainage basin has an area of 1180 km 2 and varies in elevation from 1080 m to 3940 m and has been described previously [e.g., Rice et al, 2011;Lundquist et al, 2016].…”

Combining snow, streamflow, and precipitation gauge observations to infer basin‐mean precipitation

“…Because the Tuolumne basin drains to a reservoir operated for water supply and hydroelectric generation, we use reconstructed full natural flows from the reservoir operators (for more information, see Lundquist et al . [] and Supporting Information). The full natural flows estimate the discharge in the absence of the dam, based on recorded reservoir releases and water levels.…”

High‐Elevation Evapotranspiration Estimates During Drought: Using Streamflow and NASA Airborne Snow Observatory SWE Observations to Close the Upper Tuolumne River Basin Water Balance

“…Since 2001, a network of sensors have recorded stream stage in the upper Tuolumne River basin in Yosemite National Park (Lundquist et al, ). Pressure transducers measure stream stage in tributaries and the main stem of the Tuolumne River (Figure ) in the vicinity of Tuolumne Meadows, a large subalpine meadow surrounded by extensive high‐elevation wilderness in the Sierra Nevada.…”

“…Distributed streamflow measurements allow for the observations of hydrologic fluxes at scales that may otherwise be difficult to capture, such as localized convective precipitation (Lundquist et al, ). In the upper Tuolumne River basin of Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, USA, distributed streamflow observations made since 2001 (Lundquist et al, ) are unique in that they provide unimpaired information about the hydrology of multiple nested and adjacent high‐elevation basins in a critical water supply region.…”

“…In this paper, we estimate and compare water budget components for eight alpine basins in and near Yosemite National Park (Table and Figure ) over the snow ablation and summer seasons of 2013, 2014, and 2015. We use distributed streamflow observations (Lundquist et al, ), a large‐scale lidar/spectrometer snow data set (ASO; Painter et al, ), and estimates of precipitation from a network of regional gauges to constrain the season‐scale water budgets for each basin and to estimate the unmeasured terms: ET and basin surface and subsurface water storage. The observations used were made during historic drought conditions in California that began during water year 2012.…”