Hydrological Responses

2010 Objectives
            Moisture flux recording equipment (Eddy-Covariance towers, landscape scintillometry, etc.) will be set up to monitor effects of tamarisk biocontrol on landscape-level evapotranspiration (ET), and to quantify potential groundwater savings resulting from tamarisk suppression. Sites will include a location downstream of Riverside where we expect colonization in 2010, and if feasible further downstream in the Mormon Mesa where beetle colonization is anticipated in subsequent years, and where ET studies were conducted by our co-operators in the 1990’s. NDVI remote sensing data from vegetation assessment will be used to extrapolate landscape level water savings.

Researchers: Kevin Hultine, Ben Conrad, Dale Devitt, Michael Young