Senior Personnel
Name: Bales, Roger
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
PI, mountain hydrology
Name: Conklin, Martha
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Co-PI surface-groundwater interaction
Name: Tague, Christina
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Co-PI modeling water and nutrient cycles
Name: Glaser, Steve
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
DUST wireless sensor network for the CZO
Name: Hopmans, Jan
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Soil Hydrology
Name: Riebe, Cliff
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Geomorphology
Name: Goulden, Mike
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Flux tower Co-PI, CZO support.
Name: Hart, Stephen
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Soil microbiology and ecology, biogeochemistry
Name: Berhe, Asmeret Asefaw
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Soil microbiology and ecology, biogeochemistry
Postdoctoral researchers
Name: Ray, Ram
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Modeling, Postdoctoral scholar
Name: Hartsough, Peter
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Soil hydrology, Postdoctoral scholar
Graduate Student
Name: Lucas, Ryan
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Water cycle and meadow research, PhD student
Name: Malazian, Armen
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Soil hydrology projects, PhD student
Name: Kerkez, Branko
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Formation and installation of wireless sensor network, PhD student
Name: Kirchner, Peter
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Water cycle, soil moisture, PhD student
Name: Hayes, Jorden
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Geomorphology, erosion, PhD student
Name: Son, Kyongho
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
PhD student modeling water and nutrient cycles, PhD student
Name: Welch, Steven
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Formation and installation of wireless sensor network, MS Student
Name: Kelly, Anne
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Evapotranspiration and water balance in forest
Name: Stacy, Erin
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Analysis of sediment and soil transport, part of carbon balance study, MS Student
Name: McCorkle, Emma
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Carbon cycling within study watersheds, MS Student
Name: Hahm, Jesse
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Geophysics
Name: Hayes, Jorden
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Geophysics
Name: Zhang, Ziran
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Wireless sensor network
Undergraduate students
Name: Roudneva, Ekaterina
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Undergraduate assistant on soil hydrology projects
Name: Marlowe, Nick
Worked for more than 160 Hours: No
Contribution to Project:
Undergraduate assistant on soil carbon cycling
Name: Jalpa, Laura
Worked for more than 160 Hours: No
Contribution to Project:
Undergraduate assistant on soil carbon cycling
Name: Newman, Alex
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Undergraduate assistant on soil carbon stabilization mechanisms
Name: Mecke, Emily
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Undergraduate Intern on soil hydrology projects
Staff
Name: Meadows, Matt
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Research hydrologist in charge of continuing CZO field program
Name: Meng, Xiande
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Data management
Name: Stacy, Erin
Worked for more than 160 Hours: Yes
Contribution to Project:
Education and outreach coordinator for project
Research and Education Activities: (See PDF version submitted by PI at the end of the report)
See attached
Findings: (See PDF version submitted by PI at the end of the report)
See attached
Training and Development
The wireless sensor network remains an uncommon approach to gathering remote field data. The
network installed at the Southern Sierra CZO consists of 57 wireless nodes, constituting one of the
largest wireless networks for this purpose. Through the work on the wireless sensor network, training
and experience continues for both investigators and graduate students.
Other training opportunities have been organized through open workshops. In December of
2012, UC Merced Professor Quinghua Guo and several students organized the CZO LiDAR Acquisition
Initiative workshop at UC Berkeley. The workshop, which was timed to coincide with the 2012 AGU Fall
Meeting in San Francisco, catered to researchers from across the CZO network. Several presentations
covered applications of LiDAR data in the CZO network, available LiDAR products, and emphasized
collaboration possibilities for cross-site projects. In the area of geophysics, Riebe has actively worked as
PI on a grant to organize and NSF-sponsored workshop on Drilling, Sampling, and Imaging the Depths of
the Critical Zone. The workshop is planned for October 24–26, 2013, in Denver, CO. It will feature an
international group of speakers.
Outreach Activities:
The educational mission of the Southern Sierra CZO is to put CZO research in a spatial and temporal
context to improve the understanding between the Sierra Nevada snowpack and state water resources
in California. The CZO accomplishes this mission through K-12 partnerships, undergraduate experiences,
communicating with peers, stakeholder education, and media projects.
Scientific knowledge from the SSCZO has generated interest from stakeholders and resource
managers across the state. Our sharing of scientific products with stakeholders includes frequent talks
around the state, hosting of visits to our laboratories and the SSCZO site, briefings with water managers
and policymakers, newspaper articles, op-ed pieces, radio interviews, television reports and web
publications. A major focus has been on working with water leaders to define and develop a new waterinformation system for California that builds on advances in wireless-sensor networks developed at the
SSCZO, plus parallel advances in cyberinfrastructure and in measurements by satellite and aircraft. A
second area has been to bring climate-change research into the policy debate, which in recent years has
been focused on infrastructure investments and water rights. Further information on our outreach
activities is detailed for each audience below.
Researchers. Outreach efforts to researchers included multiple conference sessions as well as the
workshops on LiDAR and the Depths of the Critical Zone. In May 2013, Riebe was the lead organizer of a
session at the Cordilleran Section Meeting of the Geological Society of America. It was titled: “Critical
Zone: Where Rock Meets Water and Life at Earth’s Surface.” Riebe also helped organize a session
entitled “The Deep Critical Zone and the Inception of Surface Processes” at the American Geophysical
Union's (AGU) Fall Meeting in December 2012. Southern Sierra CZO researchers presented invited
lectures in varied venues. At the Fall Meeting, SSCZO presented over 20 talks and posters during the
meeting, held this past December in San Francisco, CA. Data were presented by numerous PIs, graduate
students, and research staff. The national CZO program was an exhibitor throughout the duration of the
conference, providing information on all CZO sites. At another venue, Riebe presented a invited lecture
entitled “Looking Deep, Beyond the Average, and Into the Future of Surface Processes Research” at the
EarthCube Domain End-User Workshop: Engaging the Critical Zone community to bridge long tail science
with big data at the University of Delaware, on January 22, 2013. Riebe also serves on an advisory
committee for the EarthCubed effort.
The Southern Sierra CZO has been employing internet tools as part of its outreach program. In
2013, SSCZO established a presence on Twitter and Facebook, and SSCZO researchers are active
contributors to the new blog started by Sierra Nevada Research Institute at UC Merced. As part of the
Forest Service Webinar Series on Landscape Science, Pacific Southwest station researcher and long-time
collaborator Carolyn Hunsaker hosted the March, 2013, webinar. The webinar, entitled "Watershedscale experimental design & pre-treatment N-flux results: Kings River Experimental Watersheds, Sierra
Nevada, CA", covered experimental design of the KREW research project. The Southern Sierra CZO is colocated with the lower elevation KREW site. In April 2013, Riebe and students presented a webinar
entitled “Nutrient Deserts of the Sierra Nevada and Their Effects on Life, Soils, and Topography”. This
was offered as part of a series of webinars designed to engage CZO scientists from across disciplines.
Public Education & outreach. We regularly (at least monthly) give talks across the region, to
stakeholders with an interest in the Sierra Nevada and its recourses. We attend other planning meetings
related to resource management, where CZO knowledge may be applied. A public tour to the
Providence CZO site was organized on August 9th. This tour covered the flux tower, the wireless sensor
network, critical zone Tree-1, as well as our stream discharge gauging stations. Another focus was on the
forestry treatments (mechanical thinning) that began in the summer of 2012. As part of a larger group at
the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, Southern Sierra CZO researchers and staff are contributing to a
blog where the public can learn more about our research (snriblog.ucmerced.edu). The blog
complements the streams of information on Facebook and Twitter, providing a more in-depth review of
research issues, current questions, and researcher profiles.
Stakeholders & Resource Managers. Presentations are made to local organizations, and resource
managers on nearly a monthly basis. Audiences have included nonprofit conservancies and water
managers at the May Carpe Diem conference to the California Department of Food and Agriculture
Consortium on Climate Change Adaptation in January. During our public tour, we hosted several
congressional and state staffers, as well as forest and resource managers.
In cooperation with the US Forest Service Sierra National Forest, the Dinkey Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration Project is an ongoing effort to collaborate on Forest Service projects as part of
the Forest Landscape Restoration Act. Dinkey Creek is located next to the CZO; Matt Meadows is a
member of the group who represents CZO interests in land management projects. In the summer of
2013, Meadows officially transferred his position as CZO representative to Erin Stacy.
K-12 Education and outreach. We continue to build our partnership with local schools and
organizations. Colleagues and staff presented twice in the Spring to NatureBridge-Yosemite (NB-Y)
instructors-in-service program. The focus is on training instructors of the Yosemite Institute (YI) in
critical zone processes, with a particular focus on mountain hydrology. We will focus on activities that
stress the mountain water cycle, the role of the Sierra Nevada snowpacks to CA water supply and their
vulnerability of the snow to climate change. Armed with recent research results, these NB-Y instructors
in turn facilitate outdoor field experiences for thousands of students in Yosemite National Park.
Additional presentations are planned this fall, and we plan to collaborate with their Yosemite-area
school program on their special topic this year: Geology and Watersheds. Other K-12 partnerships
include presenting each year at Southern California Edison's Science Days and the American Association
of University Girls Science Camp. SSCZO staff also presented at the Auberry Conservation Days.
Combined, these presentations reached more than 500 grade school students. At these events CZO
colleagues facilitate hands on activities for students that focus on how Sierra Nevada hydrology impacts
California's water resources. Our K-12 partnership with the Center for Advanced Research and
Technology (CART) in Clovis, CA, continued, with CZO staff mentoring teams of CART students to
conduct a comprehensive snow survey research project.
University education. Since 2007, CZO colleagues have been providing opportunities for undergraduate
students. Undergraduates from UCM and partnering universities have worked as field and lab
technicians. The CZO summer undergraduate research intern program has given students the chance to
apply their knowledge of scientific concepts. In addition to research interns, the CZO has developed field
methods courses for undergraduates at UCM and UCD, which were both held in the past year. A major
component of these courses is visiting the CZO to learn about research and to collect data for use in
class. Since the snow melted so early in the spring of 2013, activities focused on soil moisture
measurements, meteorological station construction, and streambank measurements.
We plan to develop at least three university earth science “case studies” using data and
observations obtained from the CZO. One module will combine a basic energy balance with state of the
art technology, Raman-backscatter distributed temperature sensing, in a montane stream. Concepts to
be stressed include the spatial heterogeneity of the stream as well as the role of obtaining system
“snapshots” in time. These case studies will provide teaching notes for educators and will be posted on
the CZO website; we will also post them on websites provided by professional organizations. These case
studies will seek to provide earth science educators and students with current, peer-reviewed material.
Collaborations and cross-CZO work (ask other investigators for similar documentation, or move to
another section?)
In FY 2012, Riebe’s ongoing collaborations with Leonard Sklar (San Francisco State) and Darryl Granger
(Purdue University) expanded in separate but related projects to include work on weathering and
erosion at the Southern Sierra CZO. The work with Granger (which will develop cosmogenic Be-10 in
magnetite as a new tool in erosion and weathering studies) has been funding by NSF and includes a
cross-CZO field component at the Luquillo CZO. In a separate, cross-CZO initiative, Riebe has recently
been funded with Jon Chorover (U. Arizona; Sta. Catalina-Jemez CZO PI) to organize an NSF-workshop on
drilling, sampling and geophysical imaging of the deep critical zone. Riebe is also continuing to
collaborate with Sue Brantley (Penn State) as guest editor of a special issue on the deep critical zone for
Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (Riebe and Brantley, in prep). Meanwhile collaborations have
continued with Scott Miller (Associate Professor, Terrain Analysis, U. Wyoming), Steve Holbrook
(Professor, Geophysics, U. Wyoming), and Anthony Dosseto (Lecturer, Geochemistry, U. Wollongong).
The collaboration with Holbrook has recently evolved into a fully funded center for environmental
geophysics at the University of Wyoming. The collaboration with Holbrook on geophysics has broadly
included Hopmans (SSCZO co-PI on vadose zone) and his student and post-doc as well as Riebe (erosion
and weathering), thus instilling new interdisciplinary cohesion in the SSCZO team (Holbrook et al., in
revision). Graduate students working on erosion and weathering at the CZO include Claire Lukens (PhD
candidate, U. Wyoming), Jorden Hayes (PhD candidate with Holbrook, U. Wyoming), Jesse Hahm (MS
student, U. Wyoming), and Heather Rogers (PhD student, U. Wyoming). Funding supported part-time
work, both in the field and in the lab, for 3 undergraduate students throughout the fiscal year.
See attached document for Bibliography
Other Specific Products
Product Type:
Instruments or equipment developed
Product Description:
Still need to include? Do we have updated patent information? System and method for measuring water
fluxes and partitioning across a landscape. Disclosure & patent application filed; pending. Will be
included on UC Merced's report to federal government in June 2011.
Sharing Information:
Scalable water-balance instrument cluster.
Contributions
Contributions within Discipline:
The CZO provides a multi-disciplinary platform for research. Most of the CZO data are available to the
community, and other data to CZO cooperators who agree to data-sharing protocols.
Contributions to Other Disciplines:
The CZO fosters multi-disciplinary research. The site is also a candidate for a NEON investment (updates
from Matt or Steve), which could significantly enhance some of our CZO activities.
Contributions to Human Resource Development:
Several graduate students, undergraduates and recent Ph.D. graduates are involved with the CZO, and
are preparing themselves for independent measurement and data analysis work in field hydrology,
biogeochemistry, geophysics, and modeling.
Contributions to Resources for Research and Education:
The CZO is a research platform, i.e. infrastructure for multidisciplinary research. CZO collaborations have
created numerous education resources for K-12 students, as well as portals for the public to access
information about findings and data. Our CZO has developed 2 successful undergraduate courses in field
methods and is contributing to an intensive critical zone course through an InTeGrate-funded cross-CZO
team.
Contributions Beyond Science and Engineering:
The high profile of our CZO helps communicate water and other critical zone issues to the public, and
helps educate agencies about the need to modernize measurement and decision-making infrastructure.