Identification

Title

Evaluating Noah-MP simulated runoff and snowpack in heavily burned Pacific-Northwest snow-dominated catchments

Abstract

Terrestrial hydrology is altered by fires, particularly in snow-dominated catchments. However, fire impacts on catchment hydrology are often neglected from land surface model (LSM) simulations. Western U.S. wildfire activity has been increasing in recent decades and is projected to continue increasing over at least the next three decades, and thus it is important to evaluate if neglecting fire impacts in operational land surface models (LSMs) is a significant error source that has a noticeable signal among other sources of uncertainty. We evaluate a widely used state-of-the-art LSM (Noah-MP) in runoff and snowpack simulations at two representative fire-affected snow-dominated catchments in the Pacific Northwest: Andrew's Creek in Washington and Johnson Creek in Idaho. These two catchments are selected across all western U.S. fire-affected catchments because they are snow-dominated and experienced more than 50% burning in a single fire event with minimal burning outside of this event, which allows analyses of distinct pre- and post-fire periods. There are statistically significant shifts in model skills from pre-to post-fire years in simulating runoff and snowpack. At both study catchments, simulations miss enhancements in early-spring runoff and annual runoff efficiency during post-fire years, resulting in persistent underestimates of annual runoff anomalies throughout the 12-year post-fire analysis periods. Enhanced post-fire snow accumulation and melt contributes to observed but unmodeled increases of spring runoff and annual runoff efficiency at these catchments. Informing simulations with satellite observed land cover classifications, leaf area index, and green fraction do not consistently improve the model ability to simulate hydrologic responses to fire disturbances.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7h999cz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-05-16T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact