Hydrologic and Meteorological Data for Valdai Water-Balance Research Station, Russia

Hydrologic data were collected from 1960 to 1990 at three catchments within the Valdai water-balance research station (57.6 N, 33.1 E) in the forest zone of Russia. Each of the three catchments is characterized by a different vegetation type - grassland, mature forest, growing forest (artificially forested in 1961). Accompanying the hydrologic data are meteorological data for 1966-1983. The meteorological and hydrologic data for the grassland catchment are being used as forcing and evaluation data, respectively, by the Project for Intercomparison of Landsurface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS) Phase 2(d). The data can be acquired through the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA.

The hydrologic data consist of measurements that represent the complete water balance for each of the catchments. Data are provided at monthly time steps for the following parameters: catchment averaged total soil moisture for 20, 50, and 100 cm depths; catchment runoff; catchment averaged depth of ground water table; catchment averaged water equivalent snow depth; and, for the grassland catchment only, catchment averaged evaporation. Daily soil temperature and runoff data are also available for the grassland catchment. Precipitation measurements, provided as monthly totals of observed precipitation, were taken in a small plot near the grassland catchment. The main characteristics of the experimental watersheds, all part of the lake Valdai basin, are given in the online documentation at the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank web site. The data files are provided in ASCII format with the appropriate FORTRAN read format given in the online documentation.

The meteorological data are the same as those used for the PILPS 2(d) control run and consist of data at 3 hour time steps for the following variables: downward shortwave radiation, downward longwave radiation, precipitation rate, air temperature, wind speed, air pressure, and specific humidity. The data are available from the PILPS ftp site through a link at the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank. These data files are in ASCII format. The instructions for the PILPS experiment, also available for download through the data bank, has
additional information regarding file format.

The data providers request that you inform them if you download data by sending an e-mail to [e-mail].