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:
- How does hydrologic connectivity differ within the river-floodplain
system?
- Does connectivity demonstrate binary or continuous behavior?
- How does site-level connectivity aggregate to system-wide dynamics?
- How sensitive is floodplain connectivity to inter-annual variability
in streamflow?