Temperatures of impervious surfaces in rural Montana

Abstract

For two years (September 2021 to October 2023), I rode a bicycle carrying sensors that simultaneously measured GPS time and position, air temperature(s), surface temperature, downwelling visible and UV light, spectrally-resolved upwelling (reflected) light, plus air flow. I rode more than 170 times, covering a standard 15 km rural loop or along ∼ 12 km paths to and from Bozeman, over a range of times and weather. To accommodate frequent snow and ice conditions, I walked the same bike carrying the same sensors more than 30 times back and forth along a quiet stretch of paved (mostly) snow-covered surface. Because loop and to/from Bozeman routes ran along an identical 3 km stretch of rural highway, that stretch represents one of the most-measured extents of impervious surface. Routes covered impervious paved surfaces punctuated by intervals of gravel or tree-shade or both. Sensors, adopted from consumer applications, produced reliable repeatable data. I achieved spatial resolutions of 4 to 5 meters and temperature resolutions of 0.5 °C; a typical ride of 45 minutes produced ∼ 4000 clean data records. These data allow exploration of pavement temperatures, heat islands, surface run-off, etc. All data freely and openly available for all users. All data, recorded for every ride, exist at Zenodo addresses covering winter/spring rides (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15053199, Carlson, 2025a); summer rides (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15053252, Carlson, 2025c); and fall rides (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15053261, Carlson, 2025e), The Zenodo archive also contains image files showing data for every ride plus sensor data sheets and other helpful information; see Table 2 and Data description (Sect. 7). Users can familiarize themselves with these data by viewing a short (< 5 min) proof-of-concept video available at https://youtu.be/nMjBFbXxNWU (Carlson, 2025h).