Lutz Creek watershed, Barro Colorado Island, Republic of Panama

Abstract

AbstractLutz creek is a small (9.69 ha) catchment located on Barro Colorado Island (BCI), a 1500‐ha island in Lake Gatún, the principal freshwater reservoir (425 ha, 26 m above sea level) of the Panama Canal watershed in central Panama. In 1972, a concrete V‐notch weir was installed on the creek, located at 9°09′42.8358″N, 79°50′15.6699″W, and hydrological record keeping began. The island was first established as a research station in 1923 and precipitation data collection was initiated in 1925. A meteorological tower, installed in 1972 and located a few meters from the weir, is currently instrumented to collect air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, evapotranspiration and solar radiation. In addition, since 1972, gravimetric soil moisture has been measured at least biweekly at 10 sites located throughout the Lutz Catchment above the location of the weir. Data collection and the administration of BCI are the responsibility of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI; https://stri.si.edu) which funds the data collection and storage. Data are in the public domain, entitled ‘Lutz Watershed And Meteorological Tower’ and are available at the STRI Physical monitoring website https://biogeodb.stri.si.edu/physical_monitoring/.