Many of the world's rivers are ice covered for a portion of the year. For instance, the largest database of river ice cover documents that more than half of all of Earth's large rivers are seasonally ice covered (Yang et al., 2020). Freshwater systems are losing ice rapidly, however (Sharma et al., 2019); global scale predictions of river ice cover show that by 2100, average ice duration will decrease by 16.7 days, decreasing linearly with increases in annual mean temperature (Yang et al., 2020). These global scale patterns are further confirmed by in situ river ice records (de Rham et al.
The U.S. Federal Government supports hundreds of watershed ecosystem monitoring efforts from which solute fluxes can be calculated. While details of instrumentation and sampling methods vary across these studies, the types of data collected and the questions that motivate their analysis are remarkably similar. Nevertheless, little effort toward the compilation of these datasets has previously been made, and comparative watershed analyses have remained limited in scale. The MacroSheds project has developed a flexible, future-friendly system for continually harmonizing daily time series of streamflow, precipitation, and solute chemistry from 168+ watershed studies across the U.S., and supplementing each with a comprehensive set of predictive watershed attributes. The MacroSheds dataset is an unprecedented resource for watershed ecosystem science, and for hydrology, as a small-watershed supplement to existing collections of streamflow predictors, like CAMELS and GAGES-II. Macrosheds is accompanied by a web dashboard for visualization and an R package for local analysis.
The US Federal Government supports hundreds of watershed monitoring efforts from which solute fluxes can be calculated. Although instrumentation and methods vary between studies, the data collected and their motivating questions are remarkably similar. Nevertheless, little effort toward their compilation has previously been made. The MacroSheds project has developed a future‐friendly system for harmonizing daily time series of streamflow, precipitation, and solute chemistry from 169+ watersheds, and supplementing each with watershed attributes. Here, we describe the breadth of MacroSheds data, and detail the steps involved in rendering each data product. We provide recommendations for usage and discuss when other datasets might be more suitable. The MacroSheds dataset is an unprecedented resource for watershed science, and for hydrology, as a small‐watershed supplement to existing collections of streamflow predictors, like CAMELS and GAGES‐II. The MacroSheds platform includes a web dashboard for visualization and an R package for data access and analysis.
Diffuse nutrient runoff from agricultural fields can result in the eutrophication of downstream water bodies, highlighting a need for conservation efforts to reduce dissolved nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) loading to adjacent waterways. However, few studies explore how the impacts of field‐scale conservation manifest at the watershed scale. We explored how sources of streamflow and nutrients may influence the magnitude of the impact of conservation practices at a field versus watershed scale at the Shatto ditch watershed (SDW), where the planting of winter cover crops reduced field‐scale nitrate‐N (NO3−‐N) losses from subsurface tile drains by 69%–90%; yet watershed NO3−‐N export only decreased by 13%. To resolve this discrepancy, we used a water budget approach paired with water stable isotope (18O and 2H) analysis to determine the composition of streamflow across seasons, sampling five times from November 2018 to September 2019. While we hypothesized that watershed‐scale patterns in nutrient export were driven by direct groundwater upwelling, we found that this pathway only accounted for 43% of streamflow on average. We also developed a NO3−‐N mass balance for the watershed during our November 2018 sampling; results indicated groundwater upwelling contributed only ~1% of NO3−‐N export at the watershed outlet, while subsurface tile drains contributed the remaining 99%. Specifically, three large county tile drains (with an unknown drainage area and extent of conservation practice implementation) contributed ~69% of the watershed NO3−‐N export, obscuring the impacts of field‐scale conservation in SDW. Our study highlights the importance of cross‐scale analyses to accurately evaluate the effect of conservation given the interactions between sources of streamflow and nutrient loss at the watershed scale.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.