The application of a dendro-hydrologic model to the upper Meadow Valley Wash watershed, Lincoln County, Nevada

Availability of long-term information on the variability of water resources in a given area is particularly important for sustainable resource management. The implications of global warming on the hydrologic cycle, and the increasing water demand of a growing population in the Great Basin, require improved methods for evaluating the range of hydrologic variability in Nevada. My objective was to develop a simple water balance model that can be used to simulate streamflow over multi-century time scales using proxy precipitation and air temperature data as input. Given its ultimate purpose, the model calculated streamflow at the seasonal timescale using precipitation and air temperature-index simulated snowmelt records from the PRISM dataset at 2.5 arc-minute resolution. I present here a discussion of its application to the upper Meadow Valley Wash watershed in northeastern Lincoln County. Streamflow records during 1963 to 1974 and 2004 to 2008 from USGS gauge number 09417500 in Ursine were used to calibrate the model. Best-fit model simulations performed well with an r2 of 0.81 and average seasonal streamflow of 0.81 cm and standard deviation of 0.35 cm, compared to the observed average seasonal streamflow of 0.76 cm and standard deviation of 0.48 cm. Tree-ring records of precipitation from the watershed may ultimately be used to extend the precipitation record, and used as input to the watershed model to reconstruct streamflow and other water balance components over the past five centuries.