East River Watershed Stable Water Isotope Data in Precipitation, Snowpack and Snowmelt 2016-2020

Creators: Rosemary Carroll, Wendy Brown, Alexander Newman, Curtis Buetler, Kenneth Williams

Year: 2021

License: CC-BY 4.0

Location: The East River (ER) is a snow‐dominated, headwater basin of the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) located in the western United States. The ER is the designated testbed of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (WFSFA). Through WFSFA, observational networks have been established to measure stream discharge and precipitation chemistry. The ER is considered representative of many snow‐dominated headwaters of the Rocky Mountains. The study domain encompasses nearly 85 square km, a 1.4‐km vertical drop in elevation (4,120 to 2,760 m) and pristine alpine, subalpine, montane, and riparian ecosystems. The ER contains high‐energy mountain streams to low‐energy meandering floodplains and is eroding primarily into the Cretaceous, carbon‐rich, marine shale of the Mancos Formation. Additional metadata on specific locations within the watershed are provided in the following related data package: Varadharajan C. et al. (2020) doi:10.15485/1660962

Temporal extent: 2014-07-31 to 2020-05-20

Bounding box: 38.880°N to 39.034°N, -107.050°W to -106.880°W

Publisher: ESS_DIVE

Tags: stable water isotopes, snow, rain, snowmelt, mountain hydrology, CATEGORICAL:NONE Snow Depth/Snow Density, Isotopes, GIS/Map, Alpine & Subalpine Ecology, Plant Biology, Hydrology & Watersheds, Snow & Ice, Groundwater, Geology & Tectonics, Weather & Atmospheric Science, Gunnison Basin, Research Programs

Description

Stable water isotopes (d18O, d2H and d-excess) are important tracers in hydrologic research to understand water partitioning between vegetation, groundwater, and runoff but are rarely applied to large watersheds with persistent snowpack and complex topopgraphy. Data were collected for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Watershed Function Science Focus Area supported by the U.S Department of Energy in the East River, CO Hydrologic Unit Code (140200010) with limited data also collected in adjacent watersheds Ohio Creek and Taylor River. Data are provided in csv and includes isotopic information for precipitation (years 2014-2016), snowmelt (years 2016-2017) and snowpits (years 2016-2020). Snowpit data contain depth resolved information at 10 cm intervals for density, snow water equivalent (SWE) and stable water isotopes. Bulk isotopic data for 86 snowpits contain depth, SWE, density and SWE-weighted isotope values. Sampling locations and elevations are provided within the data files, while kmz files are provided to view sampling locations using Google Earth software.

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