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Unique 130-foot Tower is One of Two in
the World Measuring Data in Complex Mountainous
Terrain A University of
Idaho research project is collecting detailed data about the
movement of air, carbon and water that are then analyzed by
an interdisciplinary team of university faculty. Their goal:
to gain a better understanding of the basic processes of
carbon and water movement to improve the computer models
critical to studying climate change.
Idaho received funding for the
project in 2005 through a Research Infrastructure
Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation's
Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research
(EPSCoR) program. The project gained notoriety at an
international conference earlier this year thanks to the
data gathered by the project’s 130-foot tower in the Mica
Creek watershed in northern Idaho. |
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That tower is only one of two in the
world where detailed measurements of air movement, carbon
and water flux are being made in such complex mountainous
terrain. Along with two other smaller versions over
sagebrush in southeast Idaho, the tower will allow an
interdisciplinary team of scientists to address questions
about how vegetation and disturbance, such as fire or forest
diseases, affect the movement of carbon and water into and
out of the atmosphere. The
height of the tower is not its only important
characteristic. While data of this type have historically
been collected in relatively flat areas, the 130-foot tower
is constructed on a slope. In addition to slope, the
vegetation roughness, patchiness and primary wind direction
– or fetch – all increase the difficulty of measurement and
modeling. The complex terrain, combined with sensitive
instruments that collect one set of data every 0.1 seconds,
makes it a truly unique research tool that is yielding
important findings from the 2.5 billion data values gathered
so far. Professor Russ
Qualls and Wenguang Zhao, researchers at the University of
Idaho, knew they were in uncharted territory when they
constructed the Mica Creek watershed tower by hand carrying
59 bags of concrete and 80 gallons of water a half mile into
the forest to lay its base.
“It wasn’t easy to build the
tower, but the data we’re collecting is worth the effort,”
said Zhao. “At the conference earlier this year, some of our
colleagues from around the world looked at our research and
validated that this tower is producing meaningful and unique
data that could help improve the computer models used to
study things like climate change.” |
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The Mica Creek Experimental Watershed
is privately operated by Potlatch Corporation, with research
programs in cooperation with USFS Rocky Mountain Research
Station, USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and
Extension Service, University of Idaho Collaborative Working
Forests, the National Science Foundation, and Idaho EPSCoR.
For more news about Idaho EPSCoR activities continue here.
Visit the
Mica Creek Experimental Watershed Page. |
A view of the Mica Creek watershed from atop the 130'
instrument tower.
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