Producing Long-term Series of Whole-Stream Metabolism Using Readily Available Data

Abstract:

Continuous water quality and river discharge data that are readily available through government websites may be used to produce valuable information about key processes within a river ecosystem. In this work, we describe in detail the steps for acquisition and processing of river flow, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and specific conductance data that, combined with atmospheric data and physical properties of the river reach of interest, allow for the production of a long-term series of whole stream metabolism estimates, an important piece of information for the purposes of understanding the structure and function of river ecosystems. The restoration reach of the San Joaquin River in California (USA) has been intensively instrumented since 2010 and serves as an ideal case for testing this tool. The set of scripts, written in R code, can be used immediately for any other river in California for which the key parameters (river flow, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and specific conductivity) are available, and can be modified by the new users to fit their particular site conditions.