{"id":618,"date":"2017-02-10T11:01:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T18:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu\/davidcooper\/?page_id=618"},"modified":"2017-02-10T11:04:28","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T18:04:28","slug":"san-luis-valley-colorado-water-budget-plant-water-use","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu\/davidcooper\/san-luis-valley-colorado-water-budget-plant-water-use\/","title":{"rendered":"San Luis Valley, Colorado Water Budget and Plant Water Use"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]I have worked in the San Luis Valley since 1991 to understand the distribution of wetlands and their connection to the shallow ground water table, analyze the potential effects of large scale ground water pumping by AWDI and other water development companies on wetlands in the valley.\u00a0 Our work has been in support of, and funded by the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, as well as Great Sand Dunes National Park, and the State of Colorado Division of Wildlife.\u00a0 Since 1995 we have worked to understand the overall valley evapotranspiration (ET) budget from native plants using Bowen ratio micrometeorology measurements at several stations.\u00a0 From this work we have learned that ET rates are considerably lower than previously estimated, meaning there is less ground water in the valley then had been estimated.\u00a0 The ET work has been conducted in cooperation with my colleague Dr. John Sanderson of the Colorado Nature Conservancy and David Stannard of the USGS.\u00a0 Most recently MS student Julie Kray explored the effects of changing summer rainfall on plant physiological characteristics of the dominant native shrubs (greasewood and rabbitbrush) and grasses (alkali sacaton and salt grass).\u00a0 The issue is that these four species are thought to be phreatophytes, plants that can use groundwater.\u00a0 Ground water in the SLV is largely fed by snowmelt runoff from the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan Mountains, however summer precipitation from the southwestern Monsoon can recharge soil water in mid to late summer.\u00a0 We hypothesized that if the monsoon were to decrease that plants would use more ground water, while if the monsoon increased plants might use less groundwater.\u00a0 Since native plant ET is approximately 30% of the regional water budget, small differences in ground water ET over the huge are of the valley would cause the water balance to change.\u00a0 Julie measured plant xylem pressure potential to understand the functioning of these species of the growing season of two years, and she also analyzed stable oxygen isotope ratios of ground water, soil water and plant stem water to determine where plants were acquiring water seasonally over two years.\u00a0 This was done in an experimental setting of controls, and rain out shelters to reduce of eliminate summer rain, and the rain that was caught by the shelter was added via a sprinkler system to the rain on plots.\u00a0 Publications are listed below.<\/p>\n

ChimnerCooperSLV-PLSoil2004<\/a>
\nCooperSandersonStannardGroeneveldJHy2006<\/a>
\nGroeneveld et al. HYDROL_15823-2007<\/a>
\nKrayCooperSanderson2012<\/a>
\nSanderson&CooperJ Hydro 2008<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]I have worked in the San Luis Valley since 1991 to understand the distribution of wetlands and their connection to the shallow ground water table, analyze the potential effects of large scale ground water pumping by AWDI and other water development companies on wetlands in the valley.\u00a0 Our work has been in support […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-618","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu\/davidcooper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu\/davidcooper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu\/davidcooper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu\/davidcooper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu\/davidcooper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu\/davidcooper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":632,"href":"https:\/\/sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu\/davidcooper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/618\/revisions\/632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu\/davidcooper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}