/Defoliation_StreamFlow

Using a Landsat defoliation data produce to assess the impact of moderate severity disturbance on water yield, yield:precipitation, and instantaneous streamflow at 102 stream gages in southern New England.

Primary LanguageRMIT LicenseMIT

Impacts of defoliation by gypsy moth caterpillars on streamflow in Southern New England

This code is associated with the publication: Smith-Tripp, S., A. Griffith, V. Pasquarella, J.H. Matthes. Impacts of a regional multi-year insect defoliation event on growing-season runoff ratios and instantaneous streamflow characteristics. In Review.

This analysis assesses the connection between defoliation in southern New England during a 2015-2017 outbreak of gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) caterpillars and growing season (June-September) anomalies in watershed runoff ratio, water yield, and instaneous streamflow characterics derived from gage-specific flow duration curves.

The code is organized into R files with analysis pieces:

  1. 01_loadData.R: Load/download defoliation, stream gage, and precipitaiton data.
  2. 02_calculateBudgetsFDC.R: Calculate the baseline (1995-2014) and 2015-2017 growing season statistics for yield, precipitation, and runoff ratios, and FDC curves.
  3. 03_budgetModelsFigures.R: Estimate statistical models and make figures for departures in growing-season runoff ratios/yield/precipitation with defoliation intensity.
  4. 04_fdcModelsFigures.R: Estimate statistical models and make figures for departures in growing-season FDC statistics with defoliation intensity.
  5. 05_studyLocationMap.R: Make a map of the study area within the U.S. and with watershed shapfiles showing defoliation intensity in 2015-2017 growing seasons.