Interactive comment on “ Weather , snow , and streamflow data from four western juniper-dominated experimental catchments in southwestern Idaho , USA ”

Weather, snow, stream, topographic, and vegetation data are presented from the South Mountain Experimental Catchments. This study site was established in 2007 as a collaborative, long-term research laboratory to address the impacts of western juniper encroachment and woodland treatments in the interior Great Basin region of the western USA. The data provide detailed information on the weather and hydrologic response from four highly instrumented catchments in the late stages of 5 woodland encroachment in a sagebrush steppe landscape. Hourly data from six meteorologic stations and four weirs have been carefully processed, quality checked, and are serially complete. These data are ideal for hydrologic, ecosystem, and biogeochemical modeling. Data presented are publicly available from the USDA National Agricultural Library administered by the Agricultural Research Service (https://data.nal.usda.gov/dataset/data-weather-snow-and-streamflow-data-four-westernjuniper-dominated-experimental-catchments, doi:10.15482/USDA.ADC/1254010). 10


Interactive comment
Printer-friendly version Discussion paper worked just fine.
-My experiences with accessing the data set: * When i clicked "readme" file, it showed "The requested URL "/system/files/readme_2.txt" was not found on this server.".Please correct it.* The "measurement location coordinates" link showed me 10 locations.Are these for the snow course observations.Explanation of the data is missing.
-In the "Introduction" section, it is noted that western Juniper is encroaching into the sagebrush-dominated landscape in the interior Great Basin region, and the presented data will facilitate the study of the impacts of Juniper encroachment on ecohydrology.It is not clear if any of the discussed catchments present a base case with zero to minimal encroachment.If there is such a watershed, please identify it.If not, authors are encouraged to highlight sites that are "juniper influenced" vs. "sage influenced" that may allow understanding the effects of juniper encroachment.Alternatively, sufficient explanations should be provided on how the data sets may be used to study the impacts of juniper encroachment.
-P3,L31 and P4,L1: "Precipitation phase was computed using methods described by Marks et al., (2013)".Marks et al. compared 4 methods for estimating precipitation phase.I did not see the phase data from all four methods.If evaluation of the phase was done based on a certain method (e.g.dew-point temperature method) only, clearly state so.
-P3, L21: It is noted that wind direction time series was not filled, while other data sets were.Please add a short statement explaining why wind direction wasn't/can't be filled.
-P3, L29: The WMO protocol used in Dingman's book should be properly referenced by providing the page number.Otherwise, it is difficult to cross-check.
-P5, L7: Please provide more information on the thresholds or methods used to determine "excessively noisy data".

Interactive comment
Printer-friendly version Discussion paper -P6, L7: The ftp://ftp.nwrc.ars.usda.gov/publicdatabase/ is very slow.Also, I did not see any "additional" data of south mountain on this website as has been claimed.If there is some, why has that been not added to the NAL website.The FTP site also does not appear to have the details of data.I suggest removing this link.It is also not clear why Reynolds Creek watershed is mentioned here.
-While the presented data set is rich, considering that it is designed to be used for snow and hydrologic modeling, there are some important variables that are missing.For example, most radiation or snow interception/melt/accumulation models use LAI or shape of vegetation (e.g.cylindrical canopy with given minimum/maximum height and diameter at certain height) as inputs.Given the LiDAR data, can the aforementioned variables (LAI or canopy shape) be generated/provided.The would significantly improve the usability of this data by snow and hydrology modeling.Kormos et al. (2016, RE&M) have used the presented data sets for modeling, but it is not clear how the LAI was derived.
Another important data that is often required by snow and hydrology modelers for validation is SWE.It appears that SWE is only available few times during the water year.A line or two highlighting this limitation and how the presented data set may still be used for validation, should be included in the text.If there is any data of soil properties from the catchments, authors are encouraged to include those in the data set.
-Some discussion of the juniper removal plan and which watersheds they are being implemented in, should be included in the summary.This will allow readers to identify watersheds of interests where one can study the impacts of juniper removal.

Minor concerns:
-P1,L19: Consider revising "which affect wildlife habitat" to "which in turn also affects the wildlife habitat".Provide a reference or two regarding the affects on wildlife habitat.
-P2,L1: "there are limited datasets available to quantify the impact on larger scales