Cold-Air Pooling Maps for Colorado (100 m) and the East River Watershed Region (30 m)

Description

Cold-air pooling (CAP) mapped across Colorado at 100m resolution and the region surrounding the East River watershed, CO at 30m resolution. Classifications were determined using a Python implementation of the algorithm originally developed in Lundquist et al., 2008, applied to digital elevation models (DEMs) from the USGS (2024). This dataset is released in support of an upcoming manuscript studying CAP distributions across these two regions (currently in preparation). It contains two NetCDF (.nc) files structured as follows: Variables- elevation: elevation at each pixel (meters) - slope: slope at each pixel (degrees)- rank: proportion of surrounding pixels (within a square of radius r) which are lower in elevation than the given pixel. - curvature: terrain curvature at each pixel (1/m)- CAP: cold-air pooling signal at each pixel. Values: 1 = CAP, 0 no signal, -1 = no CAP. Coordinates- lon: longitude (degrees, WGS84)- lat: latitude (degrees, WGS84)- xv_dist: cross-valley distance (meters). A critical input defining the critical radii r in rank and curvature calculations. Files- Colorado_100m.nc: CAP classifications at 100m-resolution across the Colorado mountains for cross-valley distances from 10,000m to 1,000m (every 500m). Users may select the value which best describes their region of interest. - EastRiver_30m.nc: CAP classifications at 30m-resolution across terrain surrounding the East River watershed for a single cross-valley distance of 3,000m. For further detail on algorithm design and function, including the calculation of rank and curvature, CAP classification criteria, and choice of cross-valley distance, please refer to Lundquist et al., 2008 or the linked GitHub repository, which will be publicly released upon manuscript publication.For questions, please contact jcramblitt@berkeley.edu.