ABSTRACT:

This resource includes Stream Temperature, Intermittency, and Conductivity (STIC) data collected from the Talladega research watershed (outlet location: 33.76219799, -85.59550775) in the Talladega National Forest (Cleburne County, AL, USA). The watershed drains a non-perennial unnamed tributary of Pendergrass Creek, and contains 0.92 km^2 of mixed coniferous and deciduous forest in the Piedmont Upland physiographic province. Located near Anniston, AL, the watershed spans an elevation range from 345 to 456 m above sea level and is a tributary to the Coosa River (within the larger Mobile-Tombigbee basin). The region has a humid subtropical climate, with mean daily January and July air temperatures of 5.3°C and 25.3°C respectively, and mean annual precipitation of 1400 mm/yr.

These data were collected in support of the sampling goals of the Aquatic Intermittency effects on Microbiomes in Streams (AIMS) Project. 20 STIC loggers were placed along the Talladega watershed and collected data from Sep. 2021 through Oct. 2024, with an additional 29 sensors collecting the same data at the same time interval from May 2022 through Apr. 2023. We deployed these additional sensors to get a more detailed dataset for a spatially-distributed synoptic sampling event, when a field team co-collected datasets characterizing the hydrology, biogeochemistry, and ecology across all 49 locations within the Talladega watershed.

These sensors were set to collect temperature and conductivity data every 15 minutes starting from Sep. 2021 through Apr. 2024, and every 1 hour from May to Oct. 2024. The raw conductivity data were used to classify the timeseries into wet or dry readings at each timestep. Each .csv file is associated with a single site for a single year. Also included is a “ReadMe” file that includes author information, column descriptions, and site locations. More information can be found on the AIMS OSF site: https://osf.io/e7s9j/