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Crowd-sourced data link land use and soil moisture to temperature and relative humidity in southwest Michigan (USA)

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Abstract

Land use practices have replaced much of the natural ecosystems of Michigan with cropland and urban settlements. These modifications can alter regional climates because changes in vegetation can alter albedo, surface roughness, surface energy balances, and evapotranspiration. Climate may also be affected by soil, elevation, latitude, and proximity to large water bodies. We collected temperature and relative humidity data in southwest Michigan each week during May, July, and September, 2017 from the Weather Underground Sensor Network, a crowd-sourced repository for climate data. We used multiple regression to model the effects of land use/land cover on the temperature and relative humidity of the region. Results revealed that (1) soil texture and land use/land cover explained temperatures during July, (2) soil moisture explained May and July relative humidity, and (3) proximity to Lake Michigan explained September temperatures. Despite inherent error associated with crowd-sourced data, our models revealed that changes in land use/land cover have the potential to alter regional climate through modification of vegetation and disturbances of soils. Model validation indicated that predicted temperature was more accurate than relative humidity; however, both were predicted relatively well. Because continued changes in land use/land cover are expected, it is important to understand how changes to vegetation could influence regional temperature and relative humidity.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Priscilla Nyamai for useful discussions and comments on the manuscript, and for Weather Underground Sensor Network for the large scale, open source data it provides.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biology Department, Grand Valley State University, 10807 N Campus Dr, Allendale, MI, USA

    Ellen Audia, M. Megan Woller-Skar & Alexandra Locher

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  1. Ellen Audia
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  2. M. Megan Woller-Skar
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  3. Alexandra Locher
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Correspondence to Ellen Audia.

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Audia, E., Woller-Skar, M.M. & Locher, A. Crowd-sourced data link land use and soil moisture to temperature and relative humidity in southwest Michigan (USA). Theor Appl Climatol 143, 341–348 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03429-4

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