Authors: Laura Rosales-Lagarde, Chad Curtis, Jennifer Edmonds and Sungju Moon – Nevada State University; Patricia Beddows – Northwestern University; Edward Mallon – Cave Pearl Project; Todd Tietjen – Southern Nevada Water Authority; Barbara Graham – College of Southern Nevada
Title: Open-source data loggers as a research and teaching tool to explore Lake Mead water temperature responses to weather events
Abstract: Lake Mead is one of the reservoirs resulting from damming the Lower Colorado River, Nevada-Arizona, USA. This lake serves as the main potable water source, water for irrigation and hydropower for more than 25 million people in three states. Long-term drought conditions in the southwest and climate change challenge the availability of this water. This project consists of using open-source data loggers as teaching and research tools to develop personal and institutional skills to better assess water resources in the southwest USA. Cave Pearl open-source Arduino data loggers have been used to acquire 10-min resolution of a water- temperature profile from the surface to 6-m depth at Lake Mead Hemenway Harbor. Instrument deployment and data analysis has included lower- and upper-division students at Nevada State University, a 4-year Hispanic Serving Institution. Student involvement in this research fosters a sense of belonging that promotes Earth Science as a possible career path. Water temperature data has been coupled with meteorological data at a nearby National Weather Service station to explore the effects of the weather events in the shallow water column of Lake Mead. In a short-temporal scale this dataset has captured the effect of cold fronts prompting water mixing and a decrease of water temperature through the water column. The 2023 data set includes the effect of more extreme events, like Hurricane Hilary in September 2023 in the water column temperature. The exploration of these data sets offers the opportunity for collaboration and interdisciplinary research at our institutions as well as the development of more advanced data analysis skills to answer questions related to the delay in the hydrologic system to changes in the weather and the water energy budget changes in the face of climate change. This presentation will provide an overview and a preliminary analysis of the data set to set the stage for the HydroShare module that will be developed based on this project.