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. 2018 Dec 11:5:180292.
doi: 10.1038/sdata.2018.292.

The metabolic regimes of 356 rivers in the United States

Alison P Appling  1 , Jordan S Read  2 , Luke A Winslow  3 , Maite Arroita  4   5 , Emily S Bernhardt  6 , Natalie A Griffiths  7 , Robert O Hall Jr  4 , Judson W Harvey  8 , James B Heffernan  9 , Emily H Stanley  10 , Edward G Stets  11 , Charles B Yackulic  12
Affiliations

The metabolic regimes of 356 rivers in the United States

Alison P Appling et al. Sci Data. .

Abstract

A national-scale quantification of metabolic energy flow in streams and rivers can improve understanding of the temporal dynamics of in-stream activity, links between energy cycling and ecosystem services, and the effects of human activities on aquatic metabolism. The two dominant terms in aquatic metabolism, gross primary production (GPP) and aerobic respiration (ER), have recently become practical to estimate for many sites due to improved modeling approaches and the availability of requisite model inputs in public datasets. We assembled inputs from the U.S. Geological Survey and National Aeronautics and Space Administration for October 2007 to January 2017. We then ran models to estimate daily GPP, ER, and the gas exchange rate coefficient for 356 streams and rivers across the continental United States. We also gathered potential explanatory variables and spatial information for cross-referencing this dataset with other datasets of watershed characteristics. This dataset offers a first national assessment of many-day time series of metabolic rates for up to 9 years per site, with a total of 490,907 site-days of estimates.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Inputs and workflow to generate metabolism estimates and supporting datasets.
Inputs are either exogenous (dark orange plaque shapes) or encapsulate the authors’ configuration decisions (gray trapezoids). Data processing steps leverage several R packages and other tools (blue rounded rectangles); specifics of these steps are documented in the text. Data products included in this release (yellow rectangles) are organized into 8 final items (superscripts, corresponding to IDs in Table 1).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Sites included in this data publication.
Sites that met the initial site selection criteria but did not have sufficient data to be modeled are gray triangles. Sites with sufficient data for modeling are filled circles, colored according to the number of dates for which estimates were produced (3296 days is 9.02 years).
Figure 3
Figure 3. Temporal distribution of metabolism estimates at each site.
Each site forms a row, and horizontal line segments represent periods of continuous daily metabolism estimates. Colors give density of estimates, ranging from 17 to 365 daily estimates per year. For the purpose of this figure, sites were considered “seasonal” if the number of metabolism estimates in January was fewer than 1/24 the total number of estimates at a site (112 of 356 sites meet this criterion).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Dataset use reported in

  • doi: 10.1002/2017JG004140

References

Data Citations

    1. Appling A. P., et al. . 2018. U.S. Geological Survey. https://doi.org/10.5066/F70864KX - DOI

References

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