Bioclimatic and Soil Moisture Monitoring Across Elevation in a Mountain Watershed: Opportunities for Research and Resource Management

Soil moisture data are critical to understanding biophysical and societal impacts of climate change. However, soil moisture data availability is limited due to sparse in situ monitoring, particularly in mountain regions. Here we present methods, specifications, and initial results from the interactive Roaring Fork Observation Network (iRON), a soil, weather, and ecological monitoring system in the Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Initiated in 2012, the network is currently composed of nine stations, distributed in elevation from 1,890 to 3,680 m, that continually collect and transmit measurements of soil moisture at three depths (5, 20, and 50 cm), soil temperature (20 cm), and meteorological conditions. Time‐lapse cameras for phenological observations, snow depth sensors, and periodic co‐located vegetation surveys complement selected stations. iRON was conceived and designed with the joint purpose of supporting bioclimatic research and resource management objectives in a snow‐dominated watershed. In the short term, iRON data can be applied to assessing the impact of temperature and precipitation on seasonal soil moisture conditions and trends. As more data are collected over time, iRON will help improve understanding of climate‐driven changes to soil, vegetation, and hydrologic conditions. In presenting this network and its initial data, we hope that the network’s elevational gradient will contribute to bioclimatic mountain research, while active collaboration with partners in resource management may provide a model for science‐practice interaction in support of long‐term monitoring.Plain Language SummaryAs climate change drives shifts in temperature and precipitation, researchers and resource managers can benefit from improved monitoring of soil moisture. Understanding the relationship between soil moisture and other system components is crucial to improving water availability projections and understanding ecosystem responses to climate change. Despite their significance, in‐ground soil‐moisture measurements are often not available across multiple elevations within a single watershed. This paper presents a network in the Southern Rocky Mountains intended to help address this data gap and compliment data from other networks. The interactive Roaring Fork Observation Network consists of nine locations across an 1,800‐m change in elevation. Each station measures soil moisture at three depths, soil temperature, air temperature, humidity, and precipitation. Some stations are equipped with cameras or snow depth gauges, and for eight sites vegetation surveys are conducted. The data are available through a simple data portal. The network was established with local resource manager support, and one of its guiding purposes is to support management and restoration planning efforts. Because of the network’s ongoing monitoring across multiple elevations and habitats, interactive Roaring Fork Observation Network will provide researchers and resource managers with access to valuable information about changes in soil conditions in a changing climate.Key PointsSoil moisture is key to understanding and predicting change in hydrology and ecology amid climate variability and changeIn situ soil moisture and weather monitoring data are now available across an 1,800‐m elevation span in a mountain watershedThe network is supported and guided by resource managers and supports both research and resource management goalsPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149210/1/wrcr23834_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149210/2/wrcr23834.pd

Ancillary Orders of Compulsory Licensing and Their Compatibility with the TRIPS Agreement

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The International Soil Moisture Network:Serving Earth system science for over a decade

In 2009, the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) was initiated as a community effort, funded by the European Space Agency, to serve as a centralised data hosting facility for globally available in situ soil moisture measurements (Dorigo et al., 2011b, a). The ISMN brings together in situ soil moisture measurements collected and freely shared by a multitude of organisations, harmonises them in terms of units and sampling rates, applies advanced quality control, and stores them in a database. Users can freely retrieve the data from this database through an online web portal (https://ismn.earth/en/, last access: 28 October 2021). Meanwhile, the ISMN has evolved into the primary in situ soil moisture reference database worldwide, as evidenced by more than 3000 active users and over 1000 scientific publications referencing the data sets provided by the network. As of July 2021, the ISMN now contains the data of 71 networks and 2842 stations located all over the globe, with a time period spanning from 1952 to the present. The number of networks and stations covered by the ISMN is still growing, and approximately 70 % of the data sets contained in the database continue to be updated on a regular or irregular basis. The main scope of this paper is to inform readers about the evolution of the ISMN over the past decade, including a description of network and data set updates and quality control procedures. A comprehensive review of the existing literature making use of ISMN data is also provided in order to identify current limitations in functionality and data usage and to shape priorities for the next decade of operations of this unique community-based data repository

Automated Extraction of Knowledge Useful to Populate Inventive Design Ontology from Patents

International audienceThis chapter proposes an approach to extract and manage knowledge from patent documents for use by design engineers within the framework of the inventive design method (IDM). IDM is an extension of TRIZ, the theory of inventive problem solving, and is meant for complex situations. It uses generic linguistic markers to locate and extract IDM-related knowledge, such as problems, partial solutions, and parameters, to automatically populate IDM ontology

Technologies towards patterned optical foils applied to transflective LCDs

\u3cp\u3eFor better front-of-screen performance for transflective LCDs, a technology with extra free optimization parameters for the optical stack is needed. Thin wet coatable retarders which enable adjustment of the optical activity on the (sub)pixel level have been developed. Isotropic domains have been created in nematic retardation films by thermal patterning or photopatterning. Employing such a patterned retarder in a transflective LCD leads to an LCD that is lighter and thinner with good reflectivity, high transmission, and low chromaticity at all gray levels and wide viewing angles. The patterned thin-film technology has been proven to be versatile and applicable in various LCD designs.\u3c/p\u3