Infrastructure

The basic infrastructure of the LCZO is an integrated set of sampling sites (e.g. nodes in Table 2).  These sampling sites are built upon existing study sites that have long-term and ongoing records of rainfall, throughfall, litterfall, and streamflow (Schellekens et al 2004, Peters et al 2006, Heartsill et al 2007, Wei et al 2007).  Atmospheric sampling nodes consist of 8 weather stations and an additional 8 rain gages that will monitor climatic and geochemical inputs to the different lithologies and forest types across a precipitation gradient that ranges from 1000 mm/yr to 5000 mm/yr.  Atmospheric inputs are monitored at existing climate stations that are maintained by the LCZO with support from the USGS, the USFS, and UC Berkeley.  Although these stations cover the entire matrix of elevation, lithology, and forest types, most of these stations were established with previous funding that no longer exists.  LCZO funding has been used to upgraded, calibrated, and integrated these stations into a network that for the first time constrains variations in precipitation along the elevation gradient and thereby improves water budgets for the individual study basins.
Aquatic nodes of the observatory focus on quantifying the fluxes of water, sediment, and solutes from the basin and how they are transformed as they move from pore spaces in the lithologic matrix to the coastal zone.  These nodes include 8 stream gages and numerous georeferenced cross-sections and riparian sampling sites (see Phillips, Litwin, Malvadkar write-ups in this volume).  A major limitation to previous studies has been the ability to monitor storm events and temporal variations in exports.  To overcome this limitation, the LCZO has added temperature, conductivity and turbidity sensors to existing stream gages to obtain continuous records of conductivity, and temperature (Shanley et al 2008).  Water chemistry is sampled weekly and during coordinated sampling campaigns (see Occhi in this volume).  All samples are processed at the USGS WEBB laboratories and at the University of New Hampshire in collaboration with the Luquillo LTER site.
For specific details regarding datasets and sensors used at specific sites please visit us at https://www.sas.upenn.edu/lczodata