Mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation drive much of the variation in productivity across Earth's terrestrial ecosystems but do not explain variation in gross primary productivity (GPP) or ecosystem respiration (ER) in flowing waters. We document substantial variation in the magnitude and seasonality of GPP and ER across 222 US rivers. In contrast to their terrestrial counterparts, most river ecosystems respire far more carbon than they fix and have less pronounced and consistent seasonality in their metabolic rates. We find that variation in annual solar energy inputs and stability of flows are the primary drivers of GPP and ER across rivers. A classification schema based on these drivers advances river science and informs management.
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.
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