WATERS Network enabling sustainable water resources in a changing world


Supported by the National Science Foundation.

WATERS Test Bed Site — San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Nevada

WATERS Test Bed Site San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Nevada

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The CUAHSI WATERS Test Bed project—San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Nevada—focuses on data and information that are relevant to hydrologic management and research in the 60,000 km2 San Joaquin Valley drainage of California, including watersheds from the American River in the north to the Kings River in the south. The test basins for the current project, the Merced and Tuolumne, together cover an area of about 11,000 km2. Tributaries flowing into the San Joaquin Valley originate in the snow-covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada, on public lands administered by the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service.

Contact Information
Site Contacts Address
Principal Investigator: Roger C Bales
Email: rbales@ucmerced.edu
Phone: (209) 724-4348

Data Manager(s):
Xiande Meng
xmeng@ucmerced.edu

University of California - Merced
5200 North Lake Road
Merced, CA. 95343

Site History
This project focuses on establishing a “virtual” hydrologic observatory, and provide direction for building new infrastructure in an actual observatory. The information basis for the virtual observatory will be i) extensive spatial data developed by the USFS and NPS, ii) operational data from federal, state and local agencies, iii) satellite remote sensing data, and iv) research data from various investigators. Much of the Merced and Tuolumne headwater area lies inside Yosemite National Park. The observatory design concept involves establishing intensive measurements at ground-based instrument clusters, integrated with broad coverage offered by satellite remote sensing, plus operational networks.

Research Topics
This project will formulate basin-scale measurement and modeling strategies to meet priority research issues, through analysis of existing operational and research data, and assess different instrument cluster designs to provide the ground-based measurements needed for hydrologic process research. Scaling between the instrument clusters is a major challenge. Basing an observatory design on instrument clusters at representative points across the landscape recognizes that it is logistically infeasible to measure everything, everywhere, all the time. Instrument clusters co-locate key measurements, in order to illuminate linkages among processes within each cluster's relatively small footprint. Motivating science questions center on how hydrologic systems respond to multiple perturbations, i.e. how do pulses and changes propagate through the hydrologic system. The aim is to develop new process understanding and thus improve predictive ability for hydrologic responses.
Institutional Affiliations Research Web pages
  • UC Merced
  • UC Berkeley
  • UC San Diego/Scripps
  • UC Santa Barbara
  • UC Davis
  • Berkeley National Lab
  • UC Los Angeles
  • Desert Research Institute