Arc Collector Micro-climates at UW-Eau Claire
Introduction
Weather, something we all deal with. Sometimes when walking outside the question comes up of what the conditions are. This lab's goal was to investigate the weather conditions, mainly wind, dew points, humidity, and temperature 5 centimeters and 200 centimeters above the ground. The question being addressed in this lab is, "whether or not there are microclimates on the UW-Eau Claire campus.” The main tools being used was a smartphone, Kestral 3000 weather meter, and UW-Eau Claire Campus.
Methodology
There were several steps to complete before the fieldwork could start, there were some steps that need to be completed.
Equipment needed:
1. Smartphone for data collection, downloaded with “ArcGIS collector”.
2. Kestrel 3000 Weather Meter.
Step two was creating a form for the Arc Collector in ArcMap
This was the chart that was made.
Domain Name | Description | Field Text |
Ground_Cover | Type of Ground Cover | Text |
Humidity | Humidity (0-100%) | float |
Dew_Point | Dew Point (C) | float |
Temperature_5 | Temperature 5cm above ground (C) | float |
Temperature_200 | Temperature 200 cm above ground (C) | Float |
Windspeed | Windspeed (km/Average) | Float |
Comments |
| Text |
Step 3:
This step was to name the form in ArcCatalog. In this case, the name was UWEC-Microclimate.
Step 4:
This step was to export this chart to ArcCollector .
Step 5:
Start Field Collection. The sites were mostly picked at random. But all the sites were on the UW-Eau Claire Campus. UW-Eau Claire is in a valley next to a river.
Results
Figure 1:
This figure shows the Celsius temperature 5cm above the ground.
Figure 2:
This figure shows the Celsius temperatures at 200cm above the ground.
Figure 3
This figure shows the humidity percentage.
Figure 4:
This map shows the Celsius dew points.
Figure 5
This map shows wind speed in Kilometers per hour.
Discussion
From the previous maps, there are s some microclimates that do stick out.
Figure 1 showed that near the river seemed to warm up the air better at 5cm. With the coldest spots being near the creek, and on North facing slopes.
Figure 2 also showed that the river was a little warmer than the surrounding area. But the difference between 5cm and 200cm was little to nothing. The same differences were noticed, warmer near the rivers, colder on the north face, and by the creek.
Figure 3 shows that the humidity is a tad higher near the river and drier near the forest.
Figure 4 The dew point near the river definitely seemed to be a tad higher. With the forest being slightly drier, but not by much.
Figure 5: The wind was stronger immediately to the south of the river.
Notes
The difference between 5cm and 200 cm height’s temperatures was minimally different.
Limitations
The main limitation was that sometimes things got entered wrong. It is also possible that the Kestrel device was not accurate, as some points were way different. The temperature was also far different than what was reported at the Eau Claire airport. The temperature discrepancies could either be an operator error or a mechanical error.
Conclusion
The results showed there are Microclimates on UWEC. They may not be much different, but there are outliers. The river created the most noticeable differences in microclimate, and the hills also created microclimates.
Future possibilities would be to collect more points on campus and even take some outside of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Another thing would be to make sure that Kestral tool is working correctly.
In conclusion, this project showed that microclimates exist in a simple small area. Sometimes they are majorly noticeable, and sometimes they are barely detectable.
References
Arc Scene software.
ArcMap
ArcCatolog
Kestrel 3000 weather meter.
Dr. Papia Rozario for creating the lab.
Smart phone
The internet.
Warm weather clothing as the windchill was brutal that day.
Hot tea to warm up afterwards.
Dell computer
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