Operations in Range Unit 5-1

 
Problem Statement:
Foothill regions represent an important link in the storage and movement of surface waters in California. Low characteristic slopes and weakly permeable bedrock contribute to relatively long periods in which water is in contact with plant and soil material. Understanding the behavior of water and its constituents in foothill conditions is critical to predicting how this system will react to perturbations induced by climate change. Since movement and chemistry of surface water are strongly controlled by soil characteristics, detailed inventories of soil resources in foothill regions will be of increasing value to planners and scientists.

Soil Survey has traditionally mapped foothill regions at a very coarse scale, under the original pretext that the land would only ever be used as range. Rapid development in the foothills suggests that the soil resources of the foothills need a fresh look; both in terms of data quality and scale.

 
Working Hypotheses:

1. soil parameters can be predicted via terrain/vegetation induced variation in microclimate and landscale position
2. an updated soil inventory for foothill regions can be generated via several benchmark landscapes on representative geologies

 
Objectives:

1. generate raster-based, high resolutions of soil resources along with an assessment of uncertainty
2. quantify soil microclimate
3. quantify an "effective precipitation" as a function of location
4. quantify variation in mineral weathering rates as a function of soil microclimate
5. establish new methods and tools for use in the development and reporting of soil survey information

 
Tasks:

1. topographic survey by RTK GPS
2. installation of 15 pits instrumented with moisture and temperature sensors
3. installation of 9 pits instrumented with zero-tension lithium lysimeters
4. field description of an additional 10 pits
5. supplimental auger observations and sampling
6. lab characterization of all samples

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Trees in SJER RU 5-1: Oak tree distribution as estimated from NAIP imagery and SMAP supervised classification.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|             Category Information               |          |          |   %  |
|#|description                                   |     acres|  hectares| cover|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|1|open . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .| 21.016313|  8.505000| 79.84|
|2|tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .|  5.307824|  2.148000| 20.16|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|TOTAL                                           | 26.324136| 10.653000|100.00|
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Sensor Installation

Sensor installation at SJER 5-1: EC-5 sensors installed at 10cm, 30cm, and 50cm. ECT sensors installed at 10cm and 50cm.

Sensor installation at SJER 5-1 detailEC-5 sensors installed at 10cm, 30cm, and 50cm. ECT sensors installed at 10cm and 50cm.

SJER Data Logger Housing: Decagon Em5b mounted to 3ft. PCV and T-post, along with 4inch ABS housing.

SJER Detailed Soil Survey

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Topographic Survey of Select Landscapes

Observation Types: Red symbols denote the location of 10 meter USGS data, blue symbols are RTK observations.

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Preliminary 1 meter DEM in RU 5-1: This preliminary DEM was constructed using 547 RTK observations (approx 3cm vertical precision) and 2500 points from a conventional USGS 10 meter DEM. Orange symbols are piezometer locations.

SJER RU 5-1 Estimated Soil Series Map: Preliminary estimation of three landscape units and associated soil series. Chualar soils are derived from alluvium and occur in the swales; Hanford soils are derived from colluvium and occur on backslopes; the Ahwahnee soil are derived from residium and