Gap-filled daily precipitation at the 15 long-term NPP sites at Jornada Basin LTER, 1980-ongoing

This package contains gap-filled daily precipitation values for the 15 NPP sites at Jornada Basin LTER in southern New Mexico, USA. Sites were selected to represent the 5 major ecosystem types in the Chihuahuan Desert (upland grasslands, playa grasslands, mesquite-dominated shrublands, creosotebush-dominated shrublands, tarbush-dominated shrublands). For each ecosystem type, three sites were selected to represent the range in variability in production and plant diversity; thus the locations are not replicates. Gap-filled daily precipitation was calculated for the period from 1980 to 2019 at each site using the closest rain gauges that provided a minimum resolution of daily precipitation data. The Methods section and attached documents describe this in detail. The rain gauges used are described, with respect to their relationship to NPP sites, in the attached 'daily_gapfill_ppt_gauge_usage.csv' file. Although automated weather stations became operational at all NPP sites in 2013 (except P-SMAL, in 2017), updates to this data package are ongoing and are intended to gap-fill any missing or invalid data from the weather stations.