Readme.met ---------- The TARRAWARRA DATA SET ----------------------- COLLECTED BY: Dr Andrew Western and Dr Rodger Grayson Centre for Environmental Applied Hydrology Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering The University of Melbourne Parkville 3052 Australia fax: +61 3 9344 6215 email: a.western@engineering.unimelb.edu.au r.grayson@engineering.unimelb.edu.au ******************* Copyright ************************** Copyright (c) 1995-1998 Centre for Environmental Applied Hydrology, The University of Melbourne. Permission to use, copy and distribute this data and its documentation, for non-commercial purposes, is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies, that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that any publication resulting from the use of this data cites: A W Western and R B Grayson, "The Tarrawarra data set: Soil moisture patterns, soil characteristics and hydrological flux measurements", Water Resources Research, in review. Authors are requested to forward 2 copies of any publication utilising this data set to the address above. Any problems with interpreting the data or requests for further information should be addressed to Dr Andrew Western or Dr Rodger Grayson. ****************************************************************** Acknowledgments --------------- The Tarrawarra catchment is owned by the Cistercian Monks (Tarrawarra) who have provided free access to their land and willing cooperation throughout the project. Funding for this work was provided by: the Australian Research Council (project A39531077); the Cooperative Research Centre for Catchment Hydrology; Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Vienna (project 5309); the Department of Industry, Science and Technology, International Science and Technology Program; The University of Melbourne and The Ian Potter Foundation. The European Space Agency and the National Aeronautical and Space Agency provided SAR data free of charge. Assistance in the field and with data processing has been provided by Karen Moore. Field assistance has also been provided by Jenny Barkley, Alison Dedman, Judy Dunai, Sarah Ewing, Brian Finlayson, Myriam Ghali, Tim Green, Veronique Gomendy, Tony Ladson, Lee Heng, Natasha Heron, Neela Janakiramanan, Loic Mangeot, Tom McMahon, Graham Moore, Joorst Overbeek, Michael Roberts, Kate Smolenska, Hugh Turral, Mariska te Vaarwerk, Jeff Walker, Fred Watson, Garry Willgoose, Mark Wood, and Rodger Young. Garry Willgoose, Tom McMahon, Günter Blöschl, David Goodrich, Hugh Turral, and Brian Finlayson have provided useful suggestions on the field data collection. Veronique Gomendy and Hugh Turral assisted with interpretation of the soil cores. Graham Moore has provided help with instrumentation on the DCV. Fred Watson provided advice on GIS and data management. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Meteorological and runoff data ------------------------------ An automatic weather station, flume and 5 collecting raingauges are installed in the catchment. This data is summarised below. Automatic Weather Station ------------------------- The location of the weather station is provided in the file weather.pos. The measurements made are: --------------------------------------------------------------- Variable Meas't Meas't Meas't Accuracy Height Period Type --------------------------------------------------------------- Dry bulb air temperature 1.40m 6 minute average +/-0.2 C Wet bulb air temperature 1.40m 6 minute average +/-0.2 C Surface air temperature 0.08m 6 minute average +/-0.2 C Rainfall (tipping bucket) 0.30m 6 minute total 0.2mm tips Wind speed 2.0m 6 minute average +/-0.1km/hr Wind speed 2.0m 6 minute maximum +/-0.1km/hr Wind direction 2.0m 6 minute average +/-10º Global radiation 1.1m 6 minute total +/-10kJ/m^2 Net radiation 0.9m 6 minute mean +/-3% Soil temperature -0.02m 30minute mean +/-0.5 C Soil temperature -0.05m 30minute mean +/-0.5 C Soil temperature -0.10m 30minute mean +/-0.5 C Soil temperature -0.20m 30minute mean +/-0.5 C Soil temperature -0.50m 30minute mean +/-0.5 C --------------------------------------------------------------- The meteorology data is available in 2 forms - raw (6 minute) data and daily summaries. Raw (6 minute) data ------------------- The raw data is available in yearly files which have a header and then lines with white space field separation. Variables and units are provided in the headers. File Naming: the naming convention 6minyy.dat, where yy refers to the year is used. Format: header: general info including variables and units data records: date(ddmmyyyy) time(hhmm) data data ... delimiter: white space units: see header missing data: denoted by "*" thresholds: some sensors have a detection threshold (i.e. wind data). Data below the threshold are denoted with "t". The wind speed sensor has a threshold of 0.4 km/hr and the wind direction sensor has a threshold windspeed of 0.8km/hr. Daily data ---------- A daily summary of the meteorological data is provided. Minimum, maximum and mean values of temperatures, daily accumulations of rainfall and radiation variables, and wind-run and maximum wind speed are provided. The summary is provided for 9am Australian eastern standard time for the 24 hours up to the date and time provided with the record. Variables and units are provided in the header. Daily meterologic data File: daily.met Format: header: general info including measurements and units data records: date(dd/mm/yyyy) time(hh:mm:ss) data data ... delimiter: white space units: see header missing data: denoted by "*" (more than 4% or readings missing) Surface Runoff -------------- Surface runoff leaving the catchment is monitored with a flume. The flume location is provided in the file flume.pos. There is a road running along the northern boundary of the catchment; however, no runoff from that road enters the catchment. There is a farm access track running along the southern boundary of the catchment. Most of the runoff from this laneway is diverted past the flume; however, an area of approximately 40 m^2 unavoidably contributes water to the flume. Water levels in the flume are measured every minute and are saved if the change in water level exceeds 1.5 mm. Measurement accuracy as a function of discharge is: Discharge Accuracy (l/s) (mm/hr) error 1 0.0343 +/-20% 2 0.0686 +/-19% 5 0.171 +/-11% 10 0.343 +/-7.0% 20 0.646 +/-5.0% 50 1.71 +/-3.1% 100 3.43 +/-2.2% 150 5.14 +/-1.8% The discharge data is provided in two forms - instantaneous discharge and daily discharge. Instantaneous discharge file: instant.sro Format: header: general info including units data records: date(dd/mm/yyyy) time(hh:mm:ss) discharge delimiter: white space units: mm/hr missing data: denoted by "*" Daily discharge file: daily.sro Format: header: general info including units data records: date(dd/mm/yyyy) time(hh:mm:ss) discharge delimiter: white space units: mm/d missing data: denoted by "*" Collecting Rain gauges --------------------- Five collecting rain gauges are installed around the catchment. Their locations are given in rain.pos. The rain gauge at the automatic weather station is comparable to the pluviometer. The other four rain gauges are located in the corners of the catchment and were installed so that they had similar exposures. All rain gauges are standard Bureau of Meteorology, Australia gauges with a 203mm diameter orifice and they are installed with the collector 30cm above the natural surface. Collecting gauges were read on each site visit. Readings were made to the nearest 0.1mm and represent the cumulative rainfall since the previous reading. Errors will be introduced by wind effects and possibly evaporation during summer. Comparisons of the rain gauges indicate that the rainfall is generally spatially uniform. Rain gauge data is in the file collect.dat which has a header plus records with the following format (with white space field separation): File name: collect.dat Format: header: general info including units data records: date(ddmmyyyy) time(hhmm) guage1 g2 g3 g4 gauge5 units: rainfall depths are in units of mm. delimiter: white space Files ----- weather.pos flume.pos rain.pos 6minyy.dat daily.met instant.sro daily.sro collect.dat