West St. Louis Creek (WLOU) is a relocatable aquatic site within NEON's Domain 13: Southern Rockies & Colorado Plateau. WLOU is a mountain stream near Arapaho National Forest, southwest of the NIWO and COMO sites. WLOU is at 3,100 m (10,000 feet) in rugged mountainous terrain near the continental divide. The site is hosted by the U.S. Forest Service at Fraser Experimental Forest, which is used for a variety of research programs focused on forest management, water yield and physical and biological processes in high-elevation subalpine watersheds. The stream flows through a subalpine landscape dominated by aspen. 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.
Eight 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: 79
