Abstract
Abstract. The St. Denis National Wildlife Area is located in the seasonally frozen and semi-arid Canadian Prairies, close to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The site has a hummocky terrain and is underlain by clay-rich glacial tills. Though the site is only 4 km2 it contains hundreds of wetlands containing ponds which range in size, in permanence (from ephemeral to permanent), and in their interactions with groundwater (recharge and discharge ponds are present). The site was established as a research area in 1968 and has long-term records of hydrological observations, including meteorological, snow, soil moisture, surface water (ponds) and groundwater data. Some records, notably the pond level and chemistry data, span the period 1968 to present. Other datasets, notably water level observations from networks of piezometers, have been collected sporadically at different locations and times. Some datasets are collected manually on an annual basis, including pond surveys and snow surveys. Meteorological data have been collected by automatic weather stations since 1989 and have been maintained and upgraded over time, with a flux tower added to the site in 2011. Automatically logged soil moisture profiles and collocated piezometers have been running since 2013. A lidar survey from 2005 provides a 1 m resolution digital elevation map (DEM) of the site and surrounding landscape. The compiled data are available at https://doi.org/10.20383/101.0115 (Bam et al., 2018).
Highlights
The Canadian portion of the North American Prairies is bounded to the west by the Rocky Mountains and the north and east by the boreal forest
Over the past 50 years, field research has been undertaken at St. Denis National Wildlife Area (SDNWA) by hydrologists, hydrogeologists, biologists, ecologists, soil scientists, and others, and there have been more than 100 papers published on this site
Between 1993 and 2007, the precipitation, ponds, and groundwater samples were analyzed for δ2H and δ18O using isotope-ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS)
Summary
The Canadian portion of the North American Prairies is bounded to the west by the Rocky Mountains and the north and east by the boreal forest. Farming practices over the past century include widespread artificial wetland drainage in some portions of the region (Rashford et al, 2011) Within this prairie landscape, the St. Denis National Research Area (Fig. 1) was established in 1968 by the Canadian Wildlife Service for research on how agricultural practices affect waterfowl production. Over the past 50 years, field research has been undertaken at SDNWA by hydrologists, hydrogeologists, biologists, ecologists, soil scientists, and others, and there have been more than 100 papers published on this site. Many of these studies were based on short-term field experiments, which have produced snapshots of data in time. Soil and groundwater observations have been recorded continuously since 2013 (before this there are large amounts of groundwater data, but those observations are not continuous to present)
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