Investigating Changes In Hydroclimate, Land Cover And Evapotranspiration Across The Great Salt Lake Subbasins

This collection contains data on hydroclimate, land cover change and water budget over land cover classes, used in the MS Thesis:
Ghimire, B. (2025). \"Investigating Changes in Hydroclimate, Land Cover, and Evapotranspiration across The Great Salt Lake (GSL) Basin and its Major Subbasins,\" Civil and Environmental Engineering, Utah State University.

This study examined hydrologic processes within the river basins that relate to streamflow entering into the GSL, with a focus on land cover and how land cover changes are related to the hydrology and water balance. The data used in this study is organized into three resources listed in this collection that include: (1) water year averaged hydroclimatic data on precipitation, streamflow, air temperature, and evapotranspiration; (2) remotely sensed data on land cover over the Great Salt Lake (GSL) subbasins for the period of the water year 2004 to 2021; and (3) water budget data over land cover classes within the GSL basin. The hydroclimatic data over the GSL subbasins were obtained from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) national water information system (NWIS) and Climate Engine, using their APIs. Climate Engine (Huntington et al., 2017) is an open-access climate cloud-computing platform that provides point and area-averaged time series climatic data for the continental United States. Land cover maps were collected from the Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) (https://eros.usgs.gov/lcmap/apps/data-downloads) collection produced by the USGS. These data were used to analyze the water balance, hydroclimatic trends, land cover change, and evapotranspiration over land cover classes within the river basins that drain to GSL to investigate causes for lake-level changes.

本数据集收录了针对土地覆盖分类的水文气候、土地覆盖变化与陆地水量平衡相关数据，用于完成以下硕士学位论文：
Ghimire, B. (2025). 《大盐湖（Great Salt Lake, GSL）流域及其主要子流域的水文气候、土地覆盖与蒸散发变化研究》，犹他州立大学土木与环境工程系。

本研究聚焦于汇入大盐湖的河流流域内的水文过程，重点探讨土地覆盖及其变化与水文循环及水量平衡的关联。本研究使用的数据分为本数据集收录的三类资源：
(1) 按水文年平均的水文气候数据，涵盖降水、径流、气温与蒸散发；
(2) 2004至2021水文年期间，大盐湖子流域的遥感土地覆盖数据；
(3) 大盐湖流域内各土地覆盖分类下的水量平衡数据。

大盐湖子流域的水文气候数据源自美国地质调查局（United States Geological Survey, USGS）国家水信息系统（National Water Information System, NWIS）与气候引擎（Climate Engine），并通过其应用程序编程接口（Application Programming Interface, API）获取。气候引擎（Huntington 等，2017）是一款开源气候云计算平台，可为美国本土提供点位与区域平均的时序气候数据。土地覆盖地图源自美国地质调查局制作的《土地变化监测、评估与投影（Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection, LCMAP）》数据集（https://eros.usgs.gov/lcmap/apps/data-downloads）。

上述数据被用于分析汇入大盐湖的河流流域内各土地覆盖分类下的水量平衡、水文气候趋势、土地覆盖变化与蒸散发情况，以探究大盐湖水位变化的成因。