Watershed Hydrology, Soil Biogeochemistry, and Floodplain Microbial Ecology
Integrates geophysical surveys, stable isotope sampling, and microbial sequencing to understand how subsurface water flow, soil moisture gradients, and redox conditions shape nutrient cycling and microbial communities across mountain hillslope-to-floodplain transects.
Knowledge Graph (461 nodes, 3057 connections)
Research Primer
Background
The Gunnison Basin sits at the headwaters of the Colorado River, where snow, soil, rock, microbes, and vegetation interact to produce the clean, cold water that downstream communities depend on. Understanding how these pieces fit together is the focus of watershed hydrology and soil biogeochemistry — fields that track water, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and trace metals as they move from mountain ridges through soils and floodplains into streams. Because high-elevation watersheds are warming faster than lower-elevation regions, small shifts in snowmelt timing, soil moisture, or microbial activity can ripple outward to affect water quality for millions of people.
A few key ideas help make sense of the findings that follow. The critical zone is the thin layer near the Earth's surface — from the tops of trees down through soil and weathered bedrock — where rock, water, air, and life interact. Within the critical zone, meander-bound floodplains (the low, often wet land inside the bends of rivers) act as hotspots where river water, groundwater, and organic-rich soils mix. Snowmelt infiltration — the process by which melting snow soaks into soil — triggers seasonal pulses of microbial activity and nutrient release. Researchers often describe soils and sediments in terms of redox conditions: whether oxygen is present (aerobic) or absent (anaerobic). Redox conditions determine which microbes thrive, whether iron and sulfur cycle as oxidized or reduced forms, and how quickly organic carbon breaks down.
To study these systems, scientists rely on several tools introduced throughout this primer. Electrical conductivity measurements (using electrical resistivity tomography) let researchers "see" subsurface moisture without digging. Topographic wetness and topographic position indices use terrain shape to predict where water accumulates. Isotopic tracers — such as the elevation isotopic lapse rate, which describes how the heavy-to-light isotope ratio in precipitation shifts with altitude — reveal where stream water originated and how post-depositional processes like sublimation alter snow chemistry after it falls. Finally, careful data integration, quality control, outlier detection, and data citation practices make it possible to combine decades of measurements from many groups into coherent watershed-scale understanding.
Foundational work
Much of the modern picture of Gunnison Basin watershed science was built on early metagenomic and hydrochemical studies in the East River watershed near Gothic. Lavy and colleagues established that microbial communities along a hillslope-to-riparian transect are strongly structured by distance to the stream, groundwater table depth, and proximity to weathered shale bedrock, with riparian zones hosting compositionally and functionally distinct microbes capable of carbon and nitrogen fixation, sulfate reduction, and selenium reduction (Lavy et al., 2019). At roughly the same time, high-frequency stream chemistry monitoring at Coal Creek revealed that air temperatures had risen about 2 °C since 1980 and that solutes behaved very differently depending on their source: rock-weathering products stayed stable year to year, while soil-active solutes like dissolved organic carbon varied dramatically with snowmelt and warm years (Zhi et al., 2020).
These early studies framed the core questions that continue to drive the field: how do snowmelt, subsurface structure, and microbial communities jointly regulate what flows out of mountain watersheds, and how sensitive are those controls to warming?
Key findings
A central insight is that biogeochemical cycles in this landscape are tightly choreographed by water. In Coal Creek, dissolved organic carbon concentrations shifted from classic flushing patterns toward more variable responses as the climate warmed, while iron, aluminum, and other redox-sensitive metals increased alongside carbon — signs that soils are becoming more active biogeochemical players (Zhi et al., 2020). In the East River floodplain, sulfur cycling shows a similar water-driven pattern: pyrite weathering in shale bedrock releases sulfate, but intermediate elemental sulfur unexpectedly accumulates to 20–53% of the total in partially weathered rock, and sulfate reduction is active in saturated oxbow sediments, producing clear isotopic fingerprints (Fox et al., 2022). Soils themselves act as limited sulfur sinks, converting nearly all shale-derived sulfur to organic forms in the top meter.
Floodplain carbon storage is governed by a surprising mix of biological and chemical controls. Reactive iron — not fungal community composition — turns out to drive the oxidation potential of organic carbon in these soils, with permanently flooded zones showing the highest iron-mediated oxidative activity (Naughton et al., 2023). Seasonal flooding temporarily suppresses microbial depolymerization of large plant-derived compounds in surface soils, while deeper soils stay energy-limited regardless of flooding (Anderson et al., 2024). Hydrogen peroxide, long assumed to require sunlight, is produced in dark subsurface waters at concentrations tracking local redox gradients — a previously hidden driver of subsurface chemistry (Yuan et al., 2022).
Perhaps the most striking finding concerns beavers. Dewey and colleagues showed that a single beaver dam imposes hydraulic gradients 10.7–13.3 times larger than seasonal snowmelt extremes, more than doubles the aerobic zone in the adjacent riparian subsurface, and boosts nitrate removal by 44.2% compared with seasonal variation alone (Dewey et al., 2022) (Dewey et al., 2022). As beavers expand their range under warming, their ecosystem engineering may outweigh direct climate effects on riparian water quality.
Current frontier
Early work through 2020 focused on establishing baselines — characterizing microbial communities, tracking stream chemistry, and mapping redox zones. Research since 2021 has shifted toward mechanistic and predictive integration. A three-phase quality-control framework now supports consistent analysis of long-term meteorological records from stations like Billy Barr (Faybishenko et al., 2021), while new guidance on data citation is helping credit the producers of the datasets that underpin integrated watershed science (Agarwal et al., 2021). Novel estimation methods extract evapotranspiration and root water uptake profiles directly from soil moisture sensor arrays, addressing one of the most poorly quantified components of the water cycle (Li et al., 2021).
The most recent studies push into coupled plant-soil-bedrock dynamics. Integrated surface-subsurface hydrologic modeling of a catchment near Crested Butte shows that slower snowmelt under evergreen forests delays peak flow, and that low-permeability upstream zones can store water without releasing it downstream (Wang et al., 2025). Comparative soil studies reveal that aspen forests protect soil organic carbon far more effectively than spruce, with aspen soils holding 46–62.6 mg g⁻¹ of carbon versus 4.8–29.0 mg g⁻¹ under spruce, through smaller soil aggregates and more active microbial transformation (Wang et al., 2025). And isotopic tracing of deep-rooted plants demonstrates that when wet precipitation declines, these plants pull water, strontium, and cation nutrients from deeper saprolite and bedrock — tightly coupling plant nutrition to the critical zone's deep architecture (Li et al., 2026).
Open questions
Several frontiers remain wide open. How will expanding beaver populations interact with more erratic snowmelt to reshape riparian nitrogen and carbon budgets over coming decades? How vulnerable are the distinct anaerobic carbon storage mechanisms in floodplain soils to a future with more frequent drying and re-flooding cycles? Can models that couple vegetation type, subsurface heterogeneity, and snowmelt timing reliably predict streamflow in ungauged headwater catchments across the Upper Colorado Basin? And as deep-rooted plants tap bedrock water during drought, how will that feedback shape long-term weathering, nutrient export, and forest resilience? Answering these questions will require continued integration of high-frequency sensor networks, metagenomics, isotopic tracers, and process-based modeling — exactly the kind of cross-disciplinary work the Gothic-area research community is positioned to deliver.
References
Agarwal, D., et al. (2021). Balancing the needs of consumers and producers for scientific data collections. Ecological Informatics. →
Anderson, C., et al. (2024). Seasonal controls on microbial depolymerization and oxidation of organic matter in floodplain soils. Environmental Science & Technology. →
Dewey, C., Fox, P.M., Bouskill, N.J., et al. (2022). Beaver dams overshadow climate extremes in controlling riparian hydrology and water quality. Nature Communications. →
Dewey, C., Fox, P.M., Bouskill, N.J., et al. (2022). Beaver dams overshadow climate extremes in controlling riparian hydrology and water quality. Nature Communications. →
Faybishenko, B., et al. (2021). Challenging problems of quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) of meteorological time series data. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment. →
Fox, P.M., et al. (2022). Sulfur Biogeochemical Cycling and Redox Dynamics in a Shale-Dominated Mountainous Watershed. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. →
Lavy, A., Geller McGrath, D., Matheus Carnevali, P.B., Wan, J., Dong, W., Tokunaga, T.K., Thomas, B.C., Williams, K.H., Hubbard, S.S., Banfield, J.F. (2019). Microbial communities across a hillslope-riparian transect shaped by proximity to the stream, groundwater table, and weathered bedrock. Ecology and Evolution. →
Li, B., et al. (2021). Estimation of Evapotranspiration Rates and Root Water Uptake Profiles From Soil Moisture Sensor Array Data. Water Resources Research. →
Li, L., et al. (2026). Depth of nutrient uptake by deep-rooted plants is regulated by water availability. PNAS. →
Naughton, H.R., Tolar, B.B., Dewey, C., Keiluweit, M., Nico, P.S., Fendorf, S. (2023). Reactive iron, not fungal community, drives organic carbon oxidation potential in floodplain soils. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. →
Wang, Y., et al. (2025). Soil signals of key mechanisms driving greater protection of organic carbon under aspen compared to spruce forests in a North American montane ecosystem. Biogeosciences. →
Wang, Y., et al. (2025). The role of snowmelt and subsurface heterogeneity in headwater hydrology of a mountainous catchment in Colorado: A model-data integration approach. Water Resources Research. →
Yuan, X., et al. (2022). Production of hydrogen peroxide in an intra-meander hyporheic zone at East River, Colorado. Scientific Reports. →
Zhi, W., Williams, K.H., Carroll, R.W.H., Brown, W., Dong, W., Kerins, D., Li, L. (2020). Significant stream chemistry response to temperature variations in a high-elevation mountain watershed. Communications Earth & Environment. →
Concept (16) →
topographic wetness index
A proxy for subsurface moisture conditions calculated as the log ratio between upslope contributing area and slope angle
electrical conductivity
Soil electrical conductivity measured via electrical resistivity tomography to estimate soil moisture and subsurface properties
data integration
The process of combining data from different sources to provide a unified view
elevation isotopic lapse rate
The systematic change in isotopic composition of precipitation with elevation due to progressive rainout and temperature effects
foresummer drought sensitivity
The slope of peak NDVI as a linear function of the June Palmer Drought Severity Index, representing plant productivity responses to early growing seas...
post-depositional processes
Physical and thermodynamic processes that alter snowpack isotopic composition after initial deposition, including sublimation, vapor exchange, and mel...
meander-bound floodplains
Floodplain regions that follow the meandering pattern of rivers and serve as scaling motifs for ecosystem modeling
topographic position index
Metric quantifying the topographic position of a site relative to surrounding landscape
snowmelt infiltration
Process by which melting snow penetrates soil and triggers changes in microbial activity and nutrient cycling
microvirus diversity
The variety and distribution of small circular single-stranded DNA viruses that infect bacteria
Show 6 more concepts
critical zone
The near-surface environment where rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms interact and drive Earth surface processes
groundwater imputation
Process of estimating or gap-filling missing entries in groundwater time series data
outlier detection
Statistical identification of observations that deviate significantly from expected patterns in meteorological data
dormancy model
Biogeochemical model that accounts for moisture-dependent activation and dormancy of distinct microbial communities at different effective saturations
ribosomal protein S3
data citation
The practice of providing formal credit to data producers through structured citations
Protocol (16) →
structure from motion
Integrates multiple spatial data layers including lidar, airborne geophysics, hyperspectral remote sensing, and satellite data to characterize hillslo...
16S rRNA gene sequencing
Systematic collection of sediment samples from floodplain sites at regular depth intervals followed by DNA extraction and metagenomic sequencing to ch...
Snow pit stable isotope sampling
Systematic collection of snowpack samples across elevation gradients using snow pits dug at 10 cm increments to obtain SWE-weighted composite isotopic...
Endmember splitting and mixing analysis
Uses stable isotope ratios (δ²H and δ¹⁸O) of precipitation and streamflow to quantify the relative contributions of snow versus rain to streamflow and...
metaSPAdes assembly pipeline
Standard metagenomics pipeline involving assembly with MEGAHIT, binning with multiple tools, dereplication, and taxonomic classification using GTDB-tk...
Illumina paired-end sequencing
Standard Illumina library preparation using Nextera XT kit followed by paired-end sequencing on HiSeq 2500 platform to generate comprehensive metageno...
Random Forest
Random Forest regression to predict ecosystem drought sensitivity from hydrological and topographic variables. Uses bootstrapped subsampling with mult...
Three-phase meteorological QA/QC workflow
A comprehensive statistical framework for quality assurance and quality control of meteorological time series data involving preliminary data explorat...
Sediment Core Sampling
Sediment samples collected in 15-cm increments using 5 cm diameter soil core sampler with slide hammer, then 8.3 cm diameter bucket auger after reachi...
Metagenomic HMM metabolic profiling
Comprehensive Hidden Markov Model analysis of metagenomic sequences to identify and quantify metabolic functions across biogeochemical pathways. Uses ...
Show 6 more protocols
Landsat NDVI drought sensitivity mapping
Processing of Landsat NDVI time series to quantify foresummer drought sensitivity as the slope of peak NDVI versus June Palmer Drought Severity Index....
Viral sequence detection and vOTU clustering
Computational pipeline using VirSorter2 and CheckV for viral sequence identification, followed by clustering into viral operational taxonomic units an...
X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure spectroscopy
Sulfur K-edge X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure spectroscopy was used to determine sulfur speciation in solid samples including bedrock, soils, and...
HydroMix
Combined use of major ion chemistry and Sr isotope signatures to identify distinct groundwater end members and quantify their contributions to stream ...
rpS3 marker gene analysis
Taxonomic classification of microbial communities using ribosomal protein S3 (rpS3) marker genes identified through Hidden Markov Models and phylogene...
Anaerobic sediment processing
Processing of sediment samples in anaerobic chamber with nitrogen-hydrogen gas mixture to preserve field conditions.
Publication (14) →
Microbial communities across a hillslope-riparian transect shaped by proximity to the stream, groundwater table, and weathered bedrock
Sulfur Biogeochemical Cycling and Redox Dynamics in a Shale-Dominated Mountainous Watershed
Depth of nutrient uptake by deep-rooted plants is regulated by water availability
Balancing the needs of consumers and producers for scientific data collections
Soil signals of key mechanisms driving greater protection of organic carbon under aspen compared to spruce forests in a North American montane ecosystem
Beaver dams overshadow climate extremes in controlling riparian hydrology and water quality
Significant stream chemistry response to temperature variations in a high-elevation mountain watershed
Beaver dams overshadow climate extremes in controlling riparian hydrology and water quality
Production of hydrogen peroxide in an intra-meander hyporheic zone at East River, Colorado
Challenging problems of quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) of meteorological time series data
Show 4 more publications
The role of snowmelt and subsurface heterogeneity in headwater hydrology of a mountainous catchment in Colorado: A model-data integration approach
Seasonal controls on microbial depolymerization and oxidation of organic matter in floodplain soils
Reactive iron, not fungal community, drives organic carbon oxidation potential in floodplain soils
Estimation of Evapotranspiration Rates and Root Water Uptake Profiles From Soil Moisture Sensor Array Data
Dataset (78) →
Data for "Depth of nutrient uptake by deep-rooted plants is regulated by water availability"
The data set consists of strontium (Sr) isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr), water isotopes, soil cation concentrations, soil water potential sensor data, and ...
Surface Water Disinfection Byproducts and Organic Matter Characterization Data Associated with: “Disinfection byproducts formed during drinking water treatment reveal an export control point for dissolved organic matter in a subalpine headwater stream”
This dataset is associated with the publication “Disinfection byproducts formed during drinking water treatment reveal an export control point f...
Hydrological control of chemical weathering and rock-carbon fluxes: East River, Colorado
This data package is used in the manuscript entitled “Hydrological control of chemical weathering and rock-carbon fluxes”. The field study was conduct...
Metagenome-assembled genomes measured at 3 depths during snowmelt period in East River, CO (March, May, and June, September 2017)
Snowmelt is a critical biogeochemical period that accounts for large nitrogen (N) export events from high-elevation watersheds. Soil microbial populat...
Gap-filled water quality, Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index, total nitrogen (nitrate and ammonia) deposition, and land cover data trends for the Continental United States
The purpose of this work was to quantify trends in water quality, total nitrogen deposition, vegetation, and land-use trends for the Continental Unite...
Meteorological and Soil Data from Ecohydrology Sensor Towers at Pump House and Snodgrass Mountain in East River Watershed, Colorado, 2019-2025
This data package includes hourly meteorological and soil sensor data at eight ecohydrology monitoring sites in East River Watershed, Colorado as part...
East River Surface and Pore Water FTICR-MS Data Associated with “Implications of sample treatment on characterization of the riverine environmental metabolome”
Surface and pore water samples were collected from distributed locations around Meander A in East River (Crested Butte, CO, USA) during the summer of ...
Depth-resolved sagebrush root metabolomics, rhizosphere microbial communities, and geochemistry at the East River Watershed
This data set consists of results from soil nutrient profile, untargeted metabolomics, mass spec imaging, and amplicon sequencing. Data for soil nutri...
Aerobic respiration controls on shale weathering, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 2023: Dataset
This data package was generated in order to support the development of a deep-time weathering model and to assess the coupling between shale weatherin...
Hybrid predictive modeling approach simulated evapotranspiration and ecosystem respiration data
This dataset includes measured data used for developing hybrid-predictive-modeling (HPM) approach and simulated evapotranspiration and ecosystem respi...
Show 68 more datasets
2D reactive transport model of shale chemical weathering and biogeochemical fluxes along a mountainous hillslope, East River Watershed, Colorado: Input files and simulation results
This data package contains input files and simulation results for a two-dimensional (2D) reactive transport model used to quantitatively analyze the c...
East River Pore Water FTICR-MS Data associated with "Geomorphic and Hydrogeochemical Controls on Fine-Scale Hyporheic Microbiome Assembly and Function"
Pore water samples were collected from distributed locations around Meander A in East River (Crested Butte, CO, USA) during the summer of 2018. This d...
Influence of hydrological, biogeochemical and temperature transients on subsurface carbon fluxes in a flood plain environment, Biogeochemistry: Dataset
Data tables used in Arora et al. 2016b Influence of hydrological, biogeochemical and temperature transients on subsurface carbon fluxes in a flood pla...
Metagenome-assembled genomes from topsoils collected during NEON campaign in East River, CO (06/14/2018-06/28/2018)
The Watershed Function Science Focus Area (WF SFA) at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab is working to build a mechanistic understanding of the distributi...
Radon Isotopes and Stable Water Isotopes from Coal Creek Watershed, Colorado (2021)
The radon isotope and stable water isotope data for Coal Creek Watershed, Colorado, consists of d2H, d18O, and 222Rn values from samples collected at ...
Groundwater and Surface Water Flow (GSFLOW) model files for the East River, Colorado
The data package contains model input files and executables for the East River, Colorado (750 km2) located in the headwaters of the Upper Colorado Riv...
Geophysical and Environmental Monitoring Data, and Subsurface Flow Modelling Results for Chicken Bone Meadow, Mt. Snodgrass, Crested Butte, CO
This dataset includes geoelectrical monitoring data acquired between October 2021 and November 2022, soil moisture and temperature data, groundwater d...
Kinetics Data of Iron(II), Manganese(II), Dissolved Organic Carbon and Nitrate from Batch Incubation Experiments Using Hyporheic Sediments from the East River Watershed, Colorado.
Hyporheic zones act as critical ecological links between terrestrial and aquatic systems where redox-sensitive metals of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) ...
2018 Meander Y and Meander Z floodplain groundwater chemistry from the East River watershed, Colorado
This dataset includes groundwater geochemistry data from floodplain piezometers collected as a part of the Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (S...
2016 Floodplain Geochemistry from the East River Watershed, Colorado
This dataset includes groundwater geochemistry data from floodplain piezometers collected as a part of the Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (S...
Meteorological data from the Billy Bar site at the East River, Colorado.
This dataset includes Quality Assessed and Quality Controlled (QA/QC) meteorological data from the Billy Bar field site in the East River Watershed,...
Sulfur x-ray absorption spectroscopy data from bedrock shale, soil, and floodplain sediment from the East River, Colorado watershed.
This dataset includes sulfur x-ray absorption near edge spectroscopy (XANES) data collected on solid samples as a part of the Watershed Function Scien...
2017 Meander C sediment characterization from the East River, Colorado
This dataset includes characterization data collected on sediment samples from Meander C as part of the Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (SFA)...
Additional file 2 of Virus diversity and activity is driven by snowmelt and host dynamics in a high-altitude watershed soil ecosystem
Additional file 2: Supplementary Table 1. Description of the 46 IMG metagenomes and 43 metatranscriptomes (related to Fig. 1A). Supplementary Table 2....
2018 Meander C floodplain groundwater chemistry from the East River Watershed, Colorado.
This dataset includes groundwater geochemistry data from floodplain piezometers collected as a part of the Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (S...
Waterlevel, geochemical, and borehole data from Rifle, Colorado from 2006-2016
The files included in this data package provide site wide water level data, geochemical data, and borehole information associated with the Rifle site ...
Montane Conifer, Aspen, Meadow, and Sagebrush Metagenome Resolved Genomes and Traits in East River Watershed, Colorado, USA
Climate change is driving vegetation shifts in mountain watersheds, with unknown impacts on biogeochemical cycles. We hypothesize that these shifts wi...
Using strontium isotopes to evaluate the spatial variation of groundwater recharge, Science of The Total Environment: Dataset
Data tables used in Christensen et al. 2018 Using strontium isotopes to evaluate the spatial variation of groundwater recharge, Science of The Total E...
Metagenome-assembled genomes from topsoils along a hillslope water gradient across early snowmelt to late summer in East River, CO
Drought is changing the American Mountain West at unprecedented rates with unknown consequences to soil microbiome composition and function. As a part...
Constraining Bedrock Groundwater Residence Times in a Mountain System with Environmental Tracer Observations and Bayesian Uncertainty Quantification: Modeling and Data Package
Groundwater residence times provide fundamental descriptions of hydrologic dynamics and mixing processes in mountainous watersheds. Yet, few observati...
Geophysical survey associated with NEON AOP survey, East River, CO 2018
The package contains data layers developed and used in Falco et al. 2024: “EcoImaging: Advanced Sensing to Investigate Plant and Abiotic Hierarchical ...
2019 Meander C and Meander Z floodplain groundwater chemistry from the East River Watershed, CO, USA
This dataset includes groundwater geochemistry data from floodplain piezometers collected as a part of the Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (S...
Sensor-based phenology from snowmelt experiment gradient, East River, Colorado, 2017 to 2020
The timing of snowmelt is a critical cue for the initiation of growth in mountain meadow ecosystems and can also impact the duration and magnitude of ...
Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) of Meteorological Time Series Data for Billy Barr, East River, Colorado USA
A comprehensive Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) statistical framework consists of three major phases: Phase 1—Preliminary raw data set...
Geochemistry and Strontium Isotopes for Coal Creek Watershed, Colorado, 2021-2022
The geochemistry and strontium isotope data for Coal Creek Watershed, Colorado, consists of cation, anion, and 87Sr/87Sr isotope values from samples c...
CHESS 2025: Leaf Area Index (LAI) for meadow, shrub, tree, and understory vegetation
This dataset contains Leaf Area Index (LAI) measurements made as part of the Colorado Headwaters Ecological Spectroscopy Study (CHESS) during June and...
Continuous sensor suite measurements of weather, energy, soil and flux at four PumpHouse sites at the East River, Colorado.
The purpose of this package is to monitor energy and water fluxes using a comprehensive set of sensors integrated on a tripod set up at 4 locations ...
Data From: "Warming and snow loss increase reliance on old groundwater in a Colorado River headwater"
This repository contains the data and code associated with the paper titled "Warming and snow loss increase reliance on old groundwater in a Colorado ...
Raw Data published in PeerJ, 2021 for Crested Butte decomposition field study 2017-2019
This data package contains text files that describe geochemical measurements collected from 2017-2019 during isolated conifer needle decomposition fie...
ParFlow-CLM model simulation files for Maina et al., Journal of Hydrology, 2022
This dataset contains the files to run a ParFlow-CLM integrated hydrologic model simulation for Maina et al., HESS, 2022. It also contains the associa...
Microclimate observations associated with snowmelt experiment gradient sites, East River, Colorado, 2017 to 2020
The timing of snowmelt in mountain systems is a main driver of vegetation phenology and production, as well as recharge of soil moisture and ground wa...
ATS (Advanced Terrestrial Simulator) integrated hydrology and reactive transport model output in Copper Creek, Colorado.
This dataset is generated using the ATS (Advanced Terrestrial Simulator) model at Copper Creek, Colorado, the largest catchment in the East River wate...
Downscaled precipitation and mean air temperature datasets; East-Taylor subbasin; 2008-2019; daily temporal resolution; 400 m spatial resolution.
This dataset provides gridded meteorological forcing data (specifically, daily precipitation and daily mean air temperature). The dataset has been gen...
2017 Meander C and O floodplain groundwater chemistry from the East River, Colorado.
This dataset includes groundwater geochemistry data from floodplain piezometers collected as a part of the Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (S...
CLM simulated data at three FLUXNET sites and three SNOTEL sites in the Colorado River Basin.
This data package includes 6 csv files that include Community Land Model (CLM) simulations for three Fluxnet sites (i.e., US-NR1, US-GLE and US-VCM) a...
Mountain Basin Controls on the Snow-to-Streamflow Signal: An AIC-Weighted Multiple Linear Regression Framework
A regression-based analysis quantifies how basin characteristics modulate the snow-to-streamflow signal. First, we use the ERA5-Land reanalysis gridde...
Data and scripts associated with “Riverine dissolved organic matter transformations increase with watershed area, water residence time, and Damköhler numbers in nested watersheds” (v2)
This data package is associated with the publication “Riverine dissolved organic matter transformations increase with watershed area, water resi...
Model Scripts for "Old-Aged Groundwater Contributes to Mountain Hillslope Hydrologic Dynamics"
The partitioning of water inputs between deep and shallow groundwater flow paths is a fundamental processes, yet is challenging to observe. Numerical ...
Surface soil temperature and water content from warming experiment located at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Colorado, 2015 to 2019
This data package consists of soil temperature and soil water content sensor data from the warming experiment near the Rocky Mountain Biological Labor...
Groundwater elevation data for monitoring wells within the East and Taylor River basins, Colorado (USA)
This dataset is comprised of temporal variations in groundwater elevation data for the 24 monitoring wells located throughout the East River watershed...
Data and scripts from: “Denoising autoencoder for reconstructing sensor observation data and predicting evapotranspiration: noisy and missing values repair and uncertainty quantification”
This data package includes data and scripts from the manuscript “Denoising autoencoder for reconstructing sensor observation data and predicting evapo...
Mineralogy of floodplain sediments from Meanders C, O, and Z in the East River Watershed, CO, USA
This dataset includes bulk X-ray diffraction data from floodplain sediments collected as a part of the Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (SFA) ...
Water Level Data from Wells PLM1 and PLM6 for the East River Watershed, Colorado
This dataset (Williams et al., 2020) contains the original un-QA/QC-ed water level data for PLM1 and PLM6 and has been obsoleted. The data contained w...
Meteorological and hydrological parameters for 17 locations of meteorological stations of the East River Watershed
The Data Package includes a set of csv files of input meteorological parameters for locations of 17 meteorological stations within the East River wate...
Meteorological Variables and Energy Fluxes at the Pumphouse Site, Crested Butte, CO 2017-2019
This data contains output from the pumphouse eddy covariance tower that includes shortwave radiation, longwave radiation, net radiation, air temperatu...
Colorado Elevation Gradient Snowmelt Manipulation Plant Phenology 2017-2018.
This dataset includes observations of plant phenology at five locations along an elevation gradient in Crested Butte, Colorado. Observations occurred ...
Snow Depth Datasets for Snodgrass Catchment, Colorado, Water Year 2022-2023
This data package presents snow depths data from distributed temperature probes at 18 locations near Snodgrass catchment, Colorado. These data show th...
Geochemistry of East River, Colorado floodplain sediments from Meander Z and Meander Y collected in 2017.
This dataset includes sediment geochemical characterization data from floodplain sediments collected as a part of the Watershed Function Scientific Fo...
Manual soil CO2 flux, temperature and water content measurements from the Snodgrass and Copper Creek elevation transect
The manual_soil_measurements_2022_2023.csv data set contains all of the manually measured soil CO 2 efflux, volumetric water content and soil temperat...
QA/QC of the East River, Colorado, discharge and geochemical time series datasets (Almont, BCC, and Pump House) to be used for modeling of hydrogeochemical balance.
The following datasets were QA/QC-ed (Quality Assurance/Quality Control): 1. Brush Creek Confluence (BCC) discharge data (from Helen Malenda, USGS, Co...
Groundwater and river water elevations and temperature from 2017 to 2022 across Meander Z in the East River Watershed, Colorado
This dataset includes groundwater and river water elevations and temperature data collected in the East River watershed located in the Upper Colorado ...
Rhizosphere Soil Biogeochemical Data and Photosynthetic Data of Vicia Faba in a Rhizobox
Here we share the data in column format via csv files for pH, redox, and dissolved oxygen collected at hourly resolution from microelectrodes. Dissolv...
Stable isotopes of carbon dioxide (CO2), dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), water and concentrations of greenhouse gases in a mountainous watershed (Crested Butte, Colorado).
Temperature and precipitation variability in response to climate change affects water cycling of watersheds and can potentially impact water quality, ...
Identifying geochemical hot moments and their controls on a contaminated river floodplain system using wavelet and entropy approaches, Environmental modelling & software: Dataset
We used entropy and wavelet techniques to identify temporal variability in geochemical constituents and their controls along three transects within a ...
Stream bed topography in 2016 at the Lower Montane site in the East River Watershed, Colorado
This dataset contains stream bed topography data from the Lower Montane site in the East River Watershed, Colorado. It is intended to support hydro-bi...
Snowpack_Snodgrass Elevation transect_Winters (2021-22, 2022-23)_AS.csv
The data set “Snowpack_Snodgrass_AS.csv” consists of the snowpack data measured by the PhenoCams at each site up Snodgrass Mtn, Crested Butte, Co. To ...
Snowpack_Snodgrass_AS.csv
The data set “Snowpack_Snodgrass_AS.csv” consists of the snowpack data measured by the PhenoCams at each site up Snodgrass Mtn, Crested Butte, Co. To ...
Time-lapse imagery in 2017 and 2018 at the Lower Montane site in the East River Watershed, Colorado
Time-lapse imagery was collected using an automated RGB camera mounted on a pole at the base of the northeast-facing hillslope at the Lower Montane si...
Genome-resolved metagenomics and metatranscriptomics of microbial communities in three meander-bound floodplain soils along the East River, Colorado.
This dataset comprises paired environmental and genomic data for soil samples collected across meander-bound floodplains G (ERMG), L (ERML) and Z (ERM...
Soil moisture and temperature from 2019 to 2024 along northeast- and southwest-facing hillslopes at the Lower Montane site in the East River Watershed, Colorado
Soil moisture, temperature, and electrical conductivity have been monitored at multiple depths (between 10 and 50 cm) at 4 locations along a northeast...
Additional file 2 of Virus diversity and activity is driven by snowmelt and host dynamics in a high-altitude watershed soil ecosystem
Additional file 2: Supplementary Table 1. Description of the 46 IMG metagenomes and 43 metatranscriptomes (related to Fig. 1A). Supplementary Table 2....
Geochemistry and Environmental Tracer Data for Groundwater, Stream Water, and Sediment from the East Mancos River, Colorado, 2023
This U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data release contains data from stream water, groundwater, and stream sediment samples collected in August 2023 in ...
rpS3 gene phylogenetic tree
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Amino-acid Sequences of HMM Hits
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1660 clusters of ribosomal protein S3 (rpS3) amino-acid sequences
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Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) for Key Metabolism Enzymes
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The State of Open Data 2020
We’re proud to release our fifth State of Open Data report and feel inspired and encouraged that most open data trends are heading in the right direct...
Data Citation Guidelines for Earth Science Data , Version 2
Guidelines for developing citations for Earth and environmental science data generated by the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP; www.esipfed.or...