Sycamore Creek (SYCA) is a core aqautic site within NEON's Domain 14: Desert Southwest. Sycamore Creek is a shallow desert stream situated roughly 35 km northeast of Phoenix, Arizona in the Tonto National Forest. This core aquatic NEON site is hosted and managed by the United States Forest Service. The catchment area of the drainage basin is 505 km². The creek's headwaters begin on the eastern slopes of the Mazatzal Mountains and head south toward its confluence with the Verde River. This site has one meteorological station located in the riparian area and one meteorological station above water on a buoy.
The met stations are outfitted with the a subset of the same sensors used at terrestrial sites.
Measurements include wind speed and direction, air temperature, barometric pressure, relative humidity, shortwave radiation, and PAR. Remote sensing surveys of this site collect lidar, spectrometer and high resolution RGB camera data.
Four groundwater wells throughout the site collect specific conductivity, water tempertaure, and elevation of groundwater.
This site has one buoy-mounted sensor station and an inlet station and outlet station.
At the buoy, the automated instrument measurements are: PAR at water surface, PAR below water surface, temperature at a specific depth in surface water, water quality (specific conductivity, chlorophyll a, dissolved oxygen content, pH turbidity, and fDOM), and nitrate.
At the inlet and outlet stations, the measurements are: PAR below water surface, elevation of surface water, and temperature in surface water.
Field ecologists collect the following types of observational data at this site: aquatic organisms (Aquatic Microbes (surface water),macroinvertebrates
microalgae, plants and macroalgae, zooplankton. Biogeochemical data on plants,sediment water and particulates.As well as physical aquatic data on
bathymetric maps, stage,secchi depth and depth profiles, and riparian assessment.Total data products planned for this site: 53
