Plynlimon Hydrometric Review 2009, with special reference to the decade 2000-2009

Grant, Simon; Robinson, Mark. 2010 Plynlimon Hydrometric Review 2009, with special reference to the decade 2000-2009. NERC/Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, 25pp.

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Abstract/Summary

It is now a decade since the transfer of Plynlimon data processing was fully implemented at Wallingford, following the closure of the Dolydd catchment office. The core hydrometric network comprises 8 streamflow gauges, providing 15-minute discharges, and 4 automatic weather stations (AWS) recording hourly data. These data are held on a secure Oracle database containing measurements back to 1968. Recent hydrological publications have included the impacts of felling on stream regimes (Robinson and Dupeyrat, 2005) and changes in the long-term water balance (Marc and Robinson, 2007) which revealed for the first time the non-stationarity in water use of a relatively even-aged UK plantation forest. As well as dealing with processing and quality controlling the streams of flow and weather data the transfer of responsibilities to Wallingford included cataloguing a large amount of paper records, maps and documents. Where possible legacy metadata concerning the flow and weather data are captured from notebooks and diaries and have been put into electronic form. Beginning in 2000 more systematic detailed electronic metadata records have been maintained, and this information is held on a secure network drive accessible by Bangor and Wallingford staff. This metadata includes records of specific instrument changes as well as broad data issues such as extended periods of several weeks of missing data (as notably occurred due to access restrictions during the 2001 outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease). With the centralisation of work at Wallingford the opportunity was also taken to digitise many of the catchment information maps. These include the original 1:5000 maps commissioned from Huntings Surveys of the topography and stream networks, as well as specific surveys including vegetation, soils and forest extent. The field instrument locations were determined using GPS. A summary and description of this spatial data archive has been published (Brandt et al, 2004), and some of the spatial data sets free of third part licence restraints are now available for download via the CEH Information Gateway (http://gateway.ceh.ac.uk/).

Item Type:	Publication - Report
Programmes:	CEH Topics & Objectives 2009 - 2012 > Water > WA Topic 1 - Variability and Change in Water Systems
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Emmett Harding (to July 2011)
Funders/Sponsors:	NERC
NORA Subject Terms:	Hydrology
Date made live:	25 Jan 2011 13:56 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/13127

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