ABSTRACT:

The following standard operating procedure (SOP) was created for the the Aquatic Intermittency effects on Microbiomes in Streams (AIMS), an NSF EPSCoR funded project (OIA 2019603) seeking to explore the impacts of stream drying on downstream water quality across Kansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Idaho, and Mississippi. AIMS integrates datasets on hydrology, microbiomes, macroinvertebrates, and biogeochemistry in three regions (Mountain West, Great Plains, and Southeast Forests) to test the overarching hypothesis that physical drivers (e.g., climate, hydrology) interact with biological drivers (e.g., microbes, biogeochemistry) to control water quality in intermittent streams. An overview of the AIMS project can be found here: https://youtu.be/HDKIBNEnwdM

This protocol will detail the process for calibrating and launching STIC (Stream Temperature Intermittency & Relative Conductivity) sensors.

The "living" version of this SOP can be found on Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gTZ5MecE8Xjp6ymhH4rB92V_i1lH93Jv/edit

From this SOP, the following data types will be created: Time series of temperature and conductivity. [AIMS rTypes: STIC]

ABSTRACT:

Shane Creek, located north of Kings Creek in the Konza Prairie Biological Station (outlet location: 39.11522, -96.55838; 434 ha), is a native tallgrass prairie located in the Konza Prairie Biological Station, a long term ecological research station that has been in operation since 1980. Shane’s Creek is annually cattle-grazed and burned every three years. Konza is located in the Flint Hills of northern Kansas. In 2023, the outlet of the stream wet up in March and dried down in July; in 2024, the outlet of the stream wet up in March and dried down in September. Average annual precipitation for this site is 35.62 inches.

Further information for all data fields can be found in the "Data Types" tab of this file. In short, this resource contains data for sites across a suite of sensor types, denoted by the sublocation field. These sublocations include:
- "SW" -- a site where regular surface water sampling occurred, and contained a stilling well to record stream water level

This resource was created using geospatial analyses using publicly available topographic data (Digital Elevation Models, DEMs from the USGS National Map Downloader v2.0; https://apps.nationalmap.gov/downloader/).
Site locations GPS coordinates were collected using a eMLID Reach RX multi-band RTK rover.
Elevation was extracted from a DEM. All additional environmental data were derived from this DEM using whitebox functions for topographic and stream network analysis (Wu & Brown, 2022) in R version 4.4.0 (R Core Team, 2024).

Approach 1 site is outlet site, with a STIC, pressure transducer loggers, and YSI EXO and S::CAN
Approach 2 sites long term monitoring, equipped with pressure transducers and STICs
Additional sites with STICs

ABSTRACT:

Youngmeyer Ranch is located in Elk County, KS (outlet location: 37.56442, -96.49106) and managed by Witchita State University and owned by the Youngmeyer Trust. The ranch is roughly 1902 ha of grassland prairie used predominantly for cattle grazing and is burned every 1-2 years. A tributary of the Elk River, specifically the south branch of the Elk River headwaters, elevation at Youngmeyer ranges from 373-488 m with mean annual temperature of 13.7°C and mean annual precipitation of 979mm. This site is geologically constructed of Permian age limestone and shale with layers of chert below silty clay loam soils (Houseman et al. 2016). This site is predominantly grassland composed of the same dominant grasses as Konza Prairie, with scattered black oaks (Q. veluntina) along the creeks (Houseman et al. 2016).

Houseman, G. R., M. S. Kraushar, and C. M. Rogers. 2016. The Wichita State University biological field station: Bringing breadth to research along the precipitation gradient in Kansas. Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science 119(1):27-32.

Further information for all data fields can be found in the "Data Types" tab of this file. In short, this resource contains data for sites across a suite of sensor types, denoted by the sublocation field. These sublocations include:
- "SW" -- a site where regular surface water sampling occurred, and contained a stilling well to record stream water level

This resource was created using geospatial analyses using publicly available topographic data (Digital Elevation Models, DEMs from the USGS National Map Downloader v2.0; https://apps.nationalmap.gov/downloader/).
Site locations GPS coordinates were collected using a eMLID Reach RX multi-band RTK rover.
Elevation was extracted from a DEM. All additional environmental data were derived from this DEM using whitebox functions for topographic and stream network analysis (Wu & Brown, 2022) in R version 4.4.0 (R Core Team, 2024).

Approach 1 site is outlet site, with a STIC, pressure transducer loggers, and YSI EXO and S::CAN
Approach 2 sites long term monitoring, equipped with pressure transducers and STICs
Additional sites with STICs

ABSTRACT:

This study was conducted on the South Fork of the Kings Creek research watershed (outlet location: 39.092281, -96.58719) within Konza Prairie Biological Station (KBPS) near Manhattan (KS, USA). At the USGS gage located on the mainstem (06879560; est. 1979), Kings Creek is a 5th order intermittent stream draining 1059-ha of tallgrass prairie that is actively managed using controlled buns at varying frequencies (1-20 year return intervals) and grazing by bison or cattle. Kings Creek ranges in elevation from 338 to 430 m above sea level and drains into the Kansas River. The region is within a midwestern continental climate, with temperatures ranging from 4 to 22°C and mean annual precipitation averaging about 780 mm/yr.

This site lies within the Flint Hills ecoregion of eastern KS and northeastern OK, has a mean annual temperature of 11.7ºC (1983-2020), and 811 mm annual precipitation (1983-2020) with high interannual variability and an estimated 75% of annual precipitation occurring during late spring and early summer (Hayden 1998, Sadayappan et al. 2023). The AIMS study catchment, the South Fork of Kings Creek, is grazed by bison year-round, and includes sub-catchments with variable prescribed burn history, but the entire study area was burned in early April 2021. The riparian vegetation is deciduous gallery forest and the highest portion of the landscape is tallgrass prairie (Dodds et al. 2004) dominated by warm-season grasses, though woody encroachment has occurred in most subwatersheds (Sadayappan et al. 2023)*. The underlying bedrock of the Flint Hills ecotone is characterized as limestone, mudstone, and shale with predominately silty clay loam soils that rest atop (Hayden 1998, Vero et al. 2018).

This resource contains the YSI field data from AIMS approaches 1 (maintenance samples ~every 3 weeks), 2 (seasonal sampling), and 3 (syntopic sampling event) samplings at King's Creek. During sampling, a YSI Pro1030 Waterproof Handheld meter was placed in the stream and numbers were allowed to stabilize while water sampling took place. Data is not available when the site was dry - as noted by the flow_state column. In addition, some sampling events lacked a YSI handheld and data is therefore missing.

ABSTRACT:

Shane Creek, located north of Kings Creek in the Konza Prairie Biological Station (outlet location: 39.11522, -96.55838), is a native tallgrass prairie that experiences cattle grazing and burning every 1-2 years.

These data were collected in support of the sampling goals of the Aquatic Intermittency effects on Microbiomes in Streams (AIMS) Project. 7 pressure transducers were placed in surface water monitoring wells along the Shane Creek watershed, as well as an additional pressure transducer hanging from a tree at the watershed outlet to collect barometric pressure. These pressure transducers collected data from 2023 through 2024. These nested well locations monitored water level continuously throughout the project, as well as served as the AIMS approach 2 sampling locations, where a field team co-collected datasets characterizing the hydrology, biogeochemistry, and ecology across seven locations within the watershed.

These sensors were set to collect temperature and pressure data every 15 minutes starting from 2023 through 2024. The raw pressure data were converted to water level using barometric pressure data and surveyed elevation data. Each .csv file is associated with a single sensor for a single year.

For additional details see the AIMS_GP_SHN_PRESdata_ReadME.xlsx file.

ABSTRACT:

Youngmeyer Ranch is located in Elk County, KS (outlet location: 37.56442, -96.49106) and managed by Witchita State University and owned by the Youngmeyer Trust. The ranch is roughly 1902 ha of grassland prairie used predominantly for cattle grazing and is burned every 1-2 years. A tributary of the Elk River, specifically the south branch of the Elk River headwaters, elevation at Youngmeyer ranges from 373-488 m with mean annual temperature of 13.7°C and mean annual precipitation of 979mm. This site is geologically constructed of Permian age limestone and shale with layers of chert below silty clay loam soils (Houseman et al. 2016). This site is predominantly grassland composed of the same dominant grasses as Konza Prairie, with scattered black oaks (Q. veluntina) along the creeks (Houseman et al. 2016).

These data were collected in support of the sampling goals of the Aquatic Intermittency effects on Microbiomes in Streams (AIMS) Project. 14 pressure transducers were placed in seven sets of nested groundwater and surface water monitoring wells along the Youngmeyer watershed,as well as an additional pressure transducer hanging from a tree at the watershed outlet to collect barometric pressure throughout sites in the watershed. These pressure transducers collected data from 2021 through 2024. These nested well locations monitored water level continuously throughout the project, as well as served as the AIMS approach 2 sampling locations, where a field team co-collected datasets characterizing the hydrology, biogeochemistry, and ecology across seven locations within the watershed.

These sensors were set to collect temperature and pressure data every 15 minutes starting from 2021 through 2024. The raw pressure data were converted to water level using barometric pressure data and surveyed elevation data. Each .csv file is associated with a single sensor for a single year.

For more information, see the AIMS_GP_YMR_PRESdata_ReadME.xlsx file in the resource.