Multi-year characterization of land surface energy and water fluxes from a mid-continent, high elevation, riparian area

Prior work has documented the important role of upslope, groundwater subsidy to sustaining evaporative fluxes in riparian areas much longer than in upland forested regions. However,several questions remain as to what fraction of total evaporative demand are met by riparian evapotranspiration and how inter-annual variability in climate, snowpack and summer precipitation conditions combined to influence the year-to-year variability in the magnitude of riparian fluxes. Updated analysis from a long-term eddy covariance measruement systemwill be presented which explore some of the controlling influences of climate and snowpack conditions on tower-measured fluxes. Additionally, a set of single-column and distributed land surface hydrologic model experiments will also be presented with the goal of improving definition of a maximum potential evaporation flux from this high elevation ecosystem. Lastly,initial results from a companion methane flux measurement system recently placed on the main eddy-covariance measurement tower will be presented.