1.2 Study Overview
In this study we quantified temporal patterns of hydrologic connections as a continuous value between 0 and 1 from a source (the river at the upstream boundary of the study system, see Figure 1) to target sites (sites located both on the floodplain and downstream on major channel braids of the river, see Figure 1). To do this, we combined data from a network of continuous water level sensors, conservative tracer injections, and weekly sampling for aqueous geochemistry and microbiome membership in order to quantify connectivity of surface water features within the montane river-floodplain system. We also assessed the potential for microbiomes to be used as indicators of connectivity strength and identify whether they provide complementary information to more traditional hydrologic and geochemical connectivity indicators. We then generate site-specific empirical models of connectivity strength for each target site based on streamflow at the source and predict daily connectivity strength at each site. From this developed connectivity dataset, we seek to understand:
  1. How does hydrologic connectivity differ within the river-floodplain system?
  2. Does connectivity demonstrate binary or continuous behavior?
  3. How does site-level connectivity aggregate to system-wide dynamics?
  4. How sensitive is floodplain connectivity to inter-annual variability in streamflow?