A number of Jornada researchers, led by Dr. Enrique R. Vivoni, recently published a new paper in Hydrological Processes. The research group sought to understand how variations in grassland to shrubland transitions might influence ecohydrology. To address this, Vivoni and a group of undergraduate and graduate students established research catchments in the Jornada Experimental Range and the Santa Rita Experimental Range. Both sites have experienced grassland to shrubland transitions, but vary in vegetative cover, shrub biomass, and bare soil cover due to differing climatic conditions in the Chihuahuan and Sonoran Deserts. The research sites employ the use of sensing instruments to measure meteorological variables; energy, radiation, and CO2 fluxes; evapotranspiration; soil moisture and temperature; and runoff. After nearly 10 years of data collection, the authors provide an overview of their efforts and how the publicly available datasets can be utilized for ecohydrological inferences and modelling studies. See their paper here.
