High resolution flow datasets for surface runoff, surface lateral runoff and drainage pathways from 1 ha sized hydrologically isolated plots.

Hawkins, Jane

(2023) High resolution flow datasets for surface runoff, surface lateral runoff and drainage pathways from 1 ha sized hydrologically isolated plots. [Data Collection]

Copy

This dataset describes hydrology and rainfall data from a site known as the Rowden Drainage Experiment, which has 14 field-scale (1 ha sized) lysimeter plots. The experimental site was established in 1982 to primarily investigate the effects of land drainage and inorganic fertilizer input on herbage production, animal performance and nutrient losses from permanent and reseeded grassland overlaying impervious subsoils.

The hydrology dataset ‘RowdenHydrology.csv’ comprises hydrological discharge rates (mm / min) expressed as uncertainty envelopes (min and max uncertainty) for flow via surface/subsurface lateral and field drain pathways. The data were collected at 1-minute intervals from Sept 2006 to Oct 2012. Users should be aware that this .csv file is best opened from software such as R or python due to its size. Annual rainfall data collected at 60-minute intervals by two different instruments and spanning the period Sept 2006 - Dec 2012 are also included in ‘RowdenRain.csv’. Column units and descriptions are given in the metadata file, ‘Column_units_and_descriptors.csv’.

'Fig1.jpg' is a map showing the site layout of the Rowden Drainage Experiment, and 'Fig2.jpg' is an illustration of the collection pathways on the undrained and drained plots. In addition, graphs (.png files) of the mean of the uncertainty envelope values for each plot are included as a visual guide to the data and help illustrate where there are missing data. In these, red lines indicate areas of missing data. For drained plots, the top line represents quality of the surface lateral runoff data, and the bottom line the quality of the drainage data.

Item Type	Data Collection
Creators	Hawkins, Jane
Contributors	Darch, Tegan
Keywords	hydrology; rainfall patterns; runoff water; subsurface runoff; mole drainage; tile drainage; pastures; lysimeters; long term experiments; clay soils
Date	24 October 2023
Temporal coverage	From To 1 September 2006 1 January 2013
Geographic coverage	North Wyke Research, South West England, UK
Bounding Area	North Latitude East Longitude South Latitude West Longitude UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED 50.7792 -3.9156
Data collection method	Site Description The Rowden Drainage Experiment site is located in the south-west of England (3° 54’ W, 50° 46’ N; -3.9156, 50.7792) on the Rothamsted Research, North Wyke farm. The site is 180 m above sea level and the mean annual rainfall over a 40-year period (1981 to 2020) for this area is 1048 mm. The experiment was established in 1982 on old unimproved pasture on poorly drained land that slopes (5-10%) from west to east. The soil has been classified as a clayey non-calcareous pelo-stagnogley (Avery, 1980) of the Hallsworth series and is representative of much of the permanent pastureland in the UK (Boorman et al., 1995). Under the USDA system of soil taxonomy, the soil is classed as a typic haplaquept (USDA-SCS, 1975). The soil overlays the Carboniferous Crackington Formation (a division of what has historically been termed by geologists as the “Culm Measures”) which primarily consists of clay shales that when saturated with water, readily degrade to form clay. The combination of high annual rainfall coupled with a clay subsoil with <10 mm d-1 hydraulic conductivity means that the soils are waterlogged for most of the winter season. As a result, excess rainfall is only removed via overland surface runoff and sub-surface lateral flow. The experimental site originally consisted of twelve plots in two blocks of six, each of 1 ha. In 1987, a previously unfertilized area of adjacent permanent pasture was incorporated to provide two more plots, each of 0.66 ha, that received no input of mineral N fertilizer (Fig 1). Each plot is bounded by gravel interceptors, or French drains, to isolate overland surface runoff and surface lateral flow (to 30 cm depth) so that each is hydrologically isolated from its neighbour. Half of the plots (7) were drained to 85 cm by tile drains at 40 m intervals across the slope, overlain by mole drains at 2 m spacing and a depth of 55 cm down the slope (Fig 2). This design represents a typical form of field drainage management under these soil and hydrology conditions. A full description of the set-up can be found in Armstrong et al. (1984) and Armstrong and Garwood (1991). The site is included on the register of long-term ecological field experiments (LTEs) maintained by the Ecological Continuity Trust https://www.ecologicalcontinuitytrust.org/rowden-plots and on the Global Long-Term Agricultural Experiment Network (GLTEN) https://glten.org/experiments/63. Data collection Water discharge as either surface runoff/sub-surface lateral flow, or through field drains, is channelled from each plot through ½ 90° V-notch weirs (BSI, 1981). Drained plots have two weirs; one to monitor surface runoff/sub-surface lateral flow and one for the field drainage pathway. The undrained plots have only one weir to monitor surface runoff/sub-surface lateral flow. Thus, there are twenty-one weirs in total. Changes in stage height (water height) within each weir were measured with a resolution of 0.2 mm using Starlevel sensors (Unidata Model 6541 Precision Water Level instrument). Changes in stage height were automatically recorded at 1 minute intervals by a logger (CR200X, Campbell Scientific Europe, Loughborough, UK) with an internal 900 MHz spread-spectrum radio to transmit the data to an onsite PC with collection controlled using Loggernet software (Campbell Scientific Europe, Loughborough, UK). The rainfall data was collected from two different instruments; from an Automatic Weather Station and a Rainwise rain collector coupled with a RainLog (Rainwise, Bar Harbor, Maine,USA) both sited on the Rowden site. Rainfall data are given on an hourly timestep, with rainfall volume (mm/hr) for the 60 minute period preceding the date and time stamp.
Publisher	Rothamsted Research
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)	10.23637/rothamsted.98y67

Explore Further

Hawkins, Jane

10.23637/rothamsted.98y67 (DOI)

RowdenRain.csv

subject: Other
: Available under Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0
grid_on: text/csv
folder_info: 1MB