Yosemite Hydroclimate Network: Distributed Stream and Atmospheric Data for the Tuolumne River Watershed and Surroundings

Abstract

Regions of complex topography and remote wilderness terrain have spatially-varying patterns of temperature and streamflow, but due to inherent difficulties of access, are often very poorly sampled. Here we present a dataset of distributed stream stage, streamflow, stream temperature, barometric pressure, air temperature, and relative humidity from the Tuolumne River Watershed in Yosemite National Park, Sierra Nevada, California, U.S.A. for water years 2002 to 2015, as well as a quality-controlled meteorological forcing timeseries for use in hydrologic modeling. Data unique to this paper were collected using low-visibility and low-impact installations for wilderness locations and can be used alone or as a critical supplement to ancillary datasets collected by cooperating agencies, referenced herein. This dataset provides a unique opportunity to understand spatial patterns and scaling of hydroclimatic processes in complex terrain and can be used to evaluate downscaling techniques or distributed modeling. The paper also provides an example methodology of how to conduct hydroclimatic monitoring in remote wilderness.

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