Precipitation Data

The i-Tree community plays a significant role in improving and defining the future capabilities of the i-Tree suite of tools. Therefore, your ideas and comments are important. This forum will serve as a place where i-Tree users can make suggestions on ways to improve all aspects of i-Tree from functionality to the website. The i-Tree executive committee will periodically review suggestions for feasibility and future implementation.

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Ing.ale
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2016 5:22 pm

Precipitation Data

Post by Ing.ale »

Hi, I was using the i-Tree database and I wanted to use my climate data (an uploaded one) but I see that the info comes per hour, and in my case (I suppose that other people will find the same problem) I only got the "average rainfall" per month; and, only for the 1980 - 2012 years serie.

So, I leave this comment here to show an issue that got some discussion (thought).

Thx in advance for your attention.

Bb.
azelaya
i-Tree Team
Posts: 372
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 10:50 am

Re: Precipitation Data

Post by azelaya »

Hello,

Yes, the i-Tree models require precipitation data in hourly increments for a year. There are several reasons why this is needed including the Eco model uses hourly pollution data which is affected by hourly precipitation. So, the model estimates for pollution will be more accurate if hourly precipitation and pollution relationships can be modeled. Although hourly precipitation is recommended for Eco, many do not have this information and the avoided runoff estimate are not generated but other outputs will be produced. Pollution estimates will not be as accurate

For Hydro, the original model developers felt that hourly precipitation was important to capture the effects of intense rainfall events in relationship to vegetation and other hydrologic processes.

Although monthly summaries or 6 hour precipitation events could be averaged or disaggregated out to create hourly data, this may not capture differences in rainfall intensity which has different interactions with vegetation and other processes. This is something to consider when evaluating options for precipitation data.

An excel spreadsheet template for precipitation data submission is available at the following link https://www.itreetools.org/database/Con ... plate.xlsx
A member of the i-Tree Team
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