Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative

Experimental Ice Glazing in a Northern Hardwood Forest to Understand Ecological Impacts of Ice Storms: Ice Thickness (water volume)

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Metadata Provider

  • Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative

    • Address:
      705 Spear Street
      South Burlington, Vermont 05403
      United States of America

      Phone: (802) 391-4135
      Email: femc@uvm.edu
      Website: www.uvm.edu/femc

Abstract

    Using methods like those used to make snow at ski areas, researchers successfully created ice glaze on tree branches (remarkably similar to conditions during the Northeast’s 1998 Ice Storm) over a large northern hardwood forest area. This novel experimental tool will allow scientists to study controlled icing events of different intensity and frequency in different forest types. Researchers also held a workshop with ecosystem scientists, climatologists, physical scientists, computer modelers, social scientists, and industry experts to define the state-of- knowledge on ice storms and examine the nature and extent of these storms in the Northeast. In addition, they developed machine-learning algorithms which allow computer models to identify unique ice storm climatology in past weather systems to better predict ice storms in the future.

People

  • John Campbell: Principal Investigator

  • Wally Shortle: Content Provider

  • Paul Schaberg: Content Provider

  • Lindsay Rustad: Principal Investigator

Organizations

  • Northeastern States Research Cooperative : funder
  • United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service Northern Research Station: lead

Geographic Coverage

  • Coordinates

    Data Table

    • Title: Ice Thickness (water volume)
    • Start Date: 2010-12-01
    • End Date: 2011-04-01
    • Description: Ice that accumulated on branches is reported as equivalent radial ice thickness, which is the thickness of ice that would be measured if the actual ice accretion on a branch was of uniform thickness

    • Purpose:

    • Condensed Title: Z1108_2498_J5VBIX

    • Object Name: VMC.1108.2498

    • Data Type: mySQL
    • Citation: Rustad and Campbell (2018) Ice Storm Ice Thickness. Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative. Available online at: https://www.uvm.edu/femc/data/archive/project/experimental-ice-glazing/dataset/ice-storm-ice-thickness

    • Online Distribution: https://www.uvm.edu/femc/data/archive/project/experimental-ice-glazing/dataset/ice-storm-ice-thickness

    Attribute List

      Attribute Name: ornament
      • Label: ornament
      • Description: Device made of 6 dowels
      • Storage Type: int
      • Measurment Type: nominal
      Attribute Name: plot
      • Label: plot
      • Description: Plot Number
      • Storage Type: int
      • Measurment Type: nominal
      Attribute Name: water_volume_radial_ice_thickness
      • Label: water_volume_radial_ice_thickness
      • Storage Type: decimal
      • Measurment Type: ratio
      • Precision: 0.1
      • Unit: milimeter
      • Number Type: real

    Methods

    • Current Methods
      • Ice Thickness
        • Method Description: The dowels were placed in plastic bags and transported to the laboratory where the ice melted off at room temperature. The volume of meltwater from each dowel was measured and applied to the following equation: Req=-D/2+√((D^2/4+V/(πρ_i L)) )


    Sampling Equipment

    • Current Equipment
      • Dowels used to measure ice thickness
        • Sampling Description: Measurements of Req were made with a passive device constructed of six dowels coupled together with a six-way PVC connecter. Each of the dowels was 30 cm long and 2.86 cm diameter and they were oriented on the three cardinal axes (X,Y,Z)

    Site Characteristics

    • No site characteristics recorded for this dataset