COSMOS use at the Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory

3rd Annual COSMOS Workshop

Matthew MeadowsSierra Nevada Research InstituteUniversity of California Merced

Critical Zone Observatories

http://criticalzone.org

CZO Common Infrastructure

With the goal to:• resolve the evolution and formation of the CZ

and its attributes• measure the properties and structure of the

present-day CZ• construct carbon, mass and energy balances

(event- to long-time scales)Energy

Southern Sierra CZO

Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) soil moisture measurements:

• cosmic-ray• time domain reflectometry (TDR)• dielectric• neutron probe• physical sampling techniques.

Installation and Survey

Hiking the COSMOS sensor into P301.

Volumetric Water Content

Volumetric Water ContentRecalibrated

Effective soil depth

Snow depth

Snow depth variability

Dealing with snow

Soil water estimates, 0-30 cm

Correlation of COSMOS VWC

with distributed sensor network during no-snow

conditions

The Future

• Easy to deploy– Elevations, aspects, sets of sensors

• Soil moisture and vegetation– Timing of moisture stress– Evapotranspiration

• Snow and/or snow+soil storage

http://criticalzone.org/

Common CZO Infrastructure

• Fluxes within and across the critical zone boundaries– vegetation-atmospheric– terrestrial-aquatic– soil-atmospheric– soil-plant– bedrock-soil

http://criticalzone.org/