Documentation

Overview

DEVISE is built to summarize gridded weather and phenology data for management areas over time. DEVISE focuses on state and federal management units in the intermountain western USA. In brief, DEVISE calculates the average weather or phenology metric across the management unit (e.g,. hunt unit or national park) for each time period specified (by week, month, or year) and plots it on a graph. DEVISE includes data from Daymet, PRISM, SNODAS, and eMODIS datasets. 

Because the same weather and phenology metrics can be found in different datasets (e.g., both Daymet and SNODAS provide snow depth), we grouped the data into 5 broad categories: Temperature, Precipitation, Snow, Phenology, and Other. 

There are three ways to use DEVISE: 1) visualize from the management units already stored within DEVISE (most common); 2) upload your own polygon for DEVISE to summarize data (not yet implemented); and 3) review data from a point on the map (not yet implemented).

Datasets

Four datasets (mainly from federated data products) are available in DEVISE. 

  • Daymet provides modeled weather data at daily, 1km resolution grid cells from 1980 to present. DEVISE includes the following variables: daily minimum and maximum temperature (degrees Celsius), daily precipitation (mm), and daily snow water equivalent (kg/m2). Methods used to develop Daymet metrics can be found here.
  • PRISM provides modeled weather data at daily, 4km resolution grid cells from 1981 to present. DEVISE includes the following variables: daily total precipitation (rain + melted snow; mm), daily maximum and minimum temperature (degrees Celsius), and daily mean temperature (degrees Celsius). Methods used to develop PRISM metrics can be found in Daly et al. 2008. 
  • SNODAS provides modeled precipitation and snow data at daily, 1km resolution grid cells from 2003 to present. DEVISE includes the following variables: daily liquid precipitation (kg/m2), daily snow depth (meters), daily snow water equivalent (meters), and daily solid precipitation (kg/m2). Methods used to develop SNODAS metrics can be found here.
  • eMODIS provides annual (1 value per year per grid cell) phenological metrics at 250 m resolution from 2001 to present based on an analysis of a time series of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for a given year from satellite imagery captured from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite. DEVISE includes the following variables: Start of season time (day of year denoting the start of measurable photosynthesis activity), Maximum time (day of year where photosynthesis activity peaked), End of season time (day of year denoting the end of measurable photosynthesis activity), Duration (number of days where photosynthetic activity is detected), and Time Integrated NDVI (a metric of cumulative photosynthetic activity for the year). Methods used to develop Emodis metrics can be found here.