Week 3

Hello my fellow Americans!

     This post is going to be substantially longer and dryer (pineapple?) than those in the past as there are a lot of graphs and technical things. But bare with me, learning is cool if you stay in school! Ha see what I did? I just made that rhyme up myself!
     I apologize for making my 3rd week post so late (yes, it is the beginning of the 4th week), but I did use today's snow day to catch up on work.
     First, I got equations for how to measure how much rainwater we can actually collect from our roofs (obviously, one of the most important life questions always burning at the back of our minds). In a rainwater harvesting manual created by U of A students, the amount of rain we can collect is:

Rainfall (in) x 0.623 x Roof/ catchment Area (ft^2) x Runoff Coefficient

     The runoff coefficient is what percent of the rainfall can be harvested, depending on the different materials the rain runs off of (e.g. roof vs. paving vs. gravel). The .623 refers to how many gallons are in one inch of rain per 1000 square feet (623 gal). This equation will be helpful when I measure rooftops.

     This past week, I got data on precipitation for the last 30 years (1985-2014), recorded at two different "stations" in and around the city (Flagstaff Pulliam Airport and 4SW). I will get those spreadsheets up and running asap! I do have to give huge credit to my father for finding the records and Ms. Vaughan for helping throughout the day, because I do have to admit, I did end up staring for several long minutes in pure awe at the majestic space table at which we had our last group meeting... Well, since I'm giving you readers my full attention, I then took those values and calculated the monthly, decadely (is that a real thing?), and overall averages and compared to the two station. Using excel graphed all that junk and "drew" a linear trend through each. Here's what I discovered for Pulliam: the averages for each year:

Each decade:

Past 15 years:

Averages for 4SW:
Each year:

Each decade:

Past 15:

     First (as you can see with your fabulous eyeballs), although many of the points seem very spread out and sporadic--especially in the 30 year graphs--most of these trends show a decrease in precipitation (oof..). To quote the Magnificent Meilbeck, "Muy mal!" Now, the trend of the point being seemingly random, this is mainly due to the fact that the climate of Flagstaff has a very high variance from year to year. I suppose this can be seen throughout a single year too--I mean c'mon, blizzard one minute, 80º the next? What's the deal weather gods?! Getting technical, I used standard deviation on the averages at each station with each approximately 6.5. For all of you who are not math geeks, standard deviation (usually associated with variance) discovers how spread out data points are from the mean. Anywho, both of these stations also showed nearly identical trends. But one interesting thing I noticed is how that trend (based on the averages) actually increased at Pulliam! I hope to discover why, exactly, this is the case but one hypothesis I have is that Pulliam may be more exposed than 4SW, and thus is able to collect more precipitation on average! Finally, these graphs not only show recorded precip. but also that though the two stations represent very similar data, there is still variance between the two.
     My last point about variation, one thing to take into consideration is the rainshadow effect. I'm not the only one seeing that huge mountain to the north right? Well, the main idea behind this is that warm, moist air is pushed up the side of a mountain (in our case, usually from the South or Southwest). It then cools and condenses, creating clouds, from which all of that water in the air falls. Now, the air keeps moving, it plays by its own rules cause it ain't got time for any shenanigans. It has places to be, people! But this air is now dry so the other side of the mountain gets little to no precipitation. This can definitely be seen in the reports from Wupatki and Sunset Crater stations.
Wupatki:

Sunset Crater:

The precip. decrease is definitely sharper here, due to the effect I described above! Any exposed groundwater is also more quickly evaporated in this area because of the dry wind, making it a more arid landscape. So the Pulliam and 4SW are more representative of the city of Flagstaff rather than Doney Park or other northern communities. Later on, I hope to calculate the exact trend and utilize it to predict a range of precipitation for the next 10 years.

Alright, almost done guys!
     The past week, I have also been working on measuring rooftops in the Fox Glenn neighborhood.

     I chose this neighborhood rather than "Townsite" because: 1) it's newer therefore there are slightly less tress obstructing rooftops and 2) it has more medium sized homes, and thus, represents the "average" home for Flagstaff. Furthermore, I use tools in Google Earth Pro to place points on each roof, creating some freaky polygon, the area of which is calculated for me! Psh, measuring things by hand was so 2000... Anywho, amazing examples from yours truly:

Pretty neat, huh? 

     One problem I came across is that trees covering certain roofs and poor resolution made it difficult to get more accurate measurements I will take the average and use the rainfall equation above to calculate the average amount of rain the plebeians of Flagstaff can harvest!
     Well, though this post was very technical, I hope you found that helpful and informative! Thank you for taking the time to read this and please feel free to leave a comment :)
                               -Lia

Week 2

Welcome back everyone!

     Last week on Rainwater and You: the unanswered questions and mysteries! Water and cows? Connection, coincidence, or conspiracy? Why do kids love cinnamon toast crunch? And the most fundamental of them all: where is rainwater harvesting when we need it the most and can it save us?
     I apologize if this post is more dry and lacking in dorky humor than the last, the research is much more nitty-gritty.
     This past week, I researched average precipitation for Flagstaff for the past decade and got more detes on the predicted shortages! First off, according to the report Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study - Executive Summary by the US Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation the amount of water available in the Colorado River Basin over the next 50 years are uncertain and are dependent on several factors. First, I don't mean to name drop but I did meet the former Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar (he told me to call him Ken), which was pretty dang sweet. Anyways, they continue to say that "the potential impacts of future climate change and variability" contribute to the uncertainties. Now what in the world does this mean? What these smart scientists are saying is that because we are not 100% certain about how climate change will affect the globe and that there are numerous possible scenarios, we are also uncertain as to how future water supplies will be affected. Speaking more about the different scenarios, they outline four broad-range outcomes regarding future supply. The first is the Observed Resampled (OR). In this scenario, future "hydrologic trends" and variabilities are similar to those of about the past 100 years. The second is the Paleo Resampled (PR). This predicts that the trends and variabilities represent those of a much long period--approximately 2,500 years. In the Paleo Conditioned (PC), the trends and variabilities will be similar to the wet-dry states of the PR period but with magnitudes of the OR period. The final scenario is the Downscaled GCM Projected. In this, the climate will continue to warm and the natural flow (amount of flow in the river if all the extracted water was returned) will drop by 9%.
     Following this trend, there will also be an increase in frequency and duration of droughts and droughts lasting 5+ years will happen 50% of the time within the next 50 years. So in conclusion, the GCM scenario predicts that there will be continued warming across the Basin, a trend towards drying increased evapotranspiration, and decreased snow pack as a higher percentage of precipitation falls as rain. Though the Colorado River itself does not contribute to Flagstaff, these trends might be able to apply to overall climate and yearly precipitation.
     With the average precipitation, according to the city's report on climate, Flagstaff has two periods: winter (November-April) and summer/monsoon (July-August). Furthermore, it reports the average precipitation is 21.77 inches/year, saying that the average period to measure climate is 30 years. NOAA has taken the same statistics from the same length of time (1971-2000) and discovered that, as an average, the highest amount of precipitation is February-March (most snowfall) and July-August (monsoon). Considering how bipolar weather can be here in Flagstaff (snowing in June? Seriously?!), I'm surprised there is a definite pattern! Here is the graph of average precip. and temperature:

Links: http://drought.unl.edu/archive/climographs/FlagstaffANC.htm and http://drought.unl.edu/archive/climographs/pdf/Flagstaff.pdf

Furthermore, they predicted that there will be a 0-10% reduction in average annual precipitation when compared to the 1971-2000 trend with less frequent but heavier precipitation events. Finally, coming back to the city's report, a characterization of the Colorado Plateau/ Flagstaff is high variability in precip. and temp., partly due to El Nino/La nina (which will also kills people and burns down trees), but no significant trend in precipitation within the last 50-100yrs (I told you, its all over the place, man). In the next post, I hope to get more numbers on specific averages for several decades!
Well, thank you all again for reading even if it was dry but informative!



Until next week,
-Lia

Week 1

Hi everyone!

     My, how the last two trimesters have flown by! But now that they're over, that means I can start on my Senior Research Project (hereafter: SRP), which, as you can probably tell by my title, is about rainwater harvesting (in Flagstaff, Arizona)! The main focus question I'm trying to answer with this project is if residents of Flagstaff are able to collect enough rainwater from their roofs to make up for predicted water/ precipitation shortages and continue their current way of life. As Flagstaff is not sustained by the Colorado River, rainwater and yearly precipitation is crucial to the city's water supply! I'll be looking at predictions, water usage data, roof areas of a chosen neighborhood, and several other things that have slipped my mind at the moment (yes, my adoring fans, I know agonizing to not know). I will provide links or citations to the things I'll discuss so you can explore it as well!
     First of all, from this week's research I first discovered that the average amount of water (for all commercial, industrial, and residential needs) used per person per day in Flagstaff is 112 gallons. Residents and visitors combined drink approximately three billion gallons of drinking water per year. Holy guacamole! Three billion! If all of that water was in one place, I would say that the Water Nation had risen! I suppose the real question now is how many cows could get utterly stuck in that much water?! (Hehe get it? ... Utterly, ha! I crack myself up). Anywho, pushing forward with the stats, as of about the past week (since January, 29th 2015 that is) the average total consumption is 43.648 million gallons per week and 91.51 gallons per capita per day. Upper Lake Mary, an important source of water for Flagstaff, is approximately 22.7 ft. deep. (the links I got these rad stats from are provided: http://www.flagstaff.az.gov/index.aspx?nid=1275 and http://flagstaff.az.gov/index.aspx?NID=31). As these pages are from the city's website, they will have links that provide other information I have collected.
     I am going to select a specific neighborhood and use Google Earth to measure each rooftop. I will choose an area from the map that best represents average Flagstaff homes (on the map, I'm considering either "Flagstaff Townsite" or "Fox Glenn"). From the measurements, I'll calculate how much rainwater a roof can collect in cm (or inches depending on how the city measures rain. Probably in the metric system because THIS IS SCIENCE!). Well, according to my father (don't worry, I will get the exact source), for ever inch of rain that falls per 1000 square feet of roof, you can collect 600 gallons of water. For our personal water collecting system at home, just one storm can fill up all four of our smaller tanks (will get exact gallons) and a significant amount of our 1000 gallon tank. I'd say that's pretty neat and it makes it super easy and feasible for almost anybody to collect a substantial amount of water. As an interesting thing to add, here is the link to my father's little debut where he discusses our system: http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2014/09/02/12-news-harvesting-rainwater/14994903/.
     Finally, I'd like to include some statistics about the Colorado River Basin. Even though it doesn't apply to Flagstaff, this water source provides for millions of people throughout several states, and if there will be shortages as predicted, it will have a huge impact on many people. First, the Colorado River itself provides water to 40 million people and irrigates nearly 5.5 million acres of land. Second, it is a crucial water source for at least 22 federally recognized tribes, 7 National Wildlife Refuges, 4 National Recreation Areas, and 11 National Parks. (http://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/programs/crbstudy/finalreport/Executive%20Summary/CRBS_Executive_Summary_FINAL.pdf)
     Well this concludes my very first SRP post (ever!) and though it was mostly background spiel, I am hoping to go into more detail and specific activities later on and get an exact estimate on the predicted shortages.
     Farewell for now and thanks for reading!
                -Lia