Poster Details
BIOGEOCHEMICAL PATTERNS OF INTERMITTENT STREAMS IN SPACE AND TIME: IMPACTS OF DRYING AND WILDFIRE ON CARBON DYNAMICS
Stream drying (intermittency) and wildfire are expected to increase under current climate change projections for the western United States. However, the impacts of both stream drying and fire on stream carbon and nutrient dynamics are not well understood. In 2016, we examined spatial and temporal patterns in surface water biogeochemistry of a burned and an unburned headwater stream in southwest Idaho. We predicted that constituent heterogeneity increases with drying, and hypothesized that as streams dry, carbon concentrations increase due to evapoconcentration and/or increased in-stream production. We expected that spatial heterogeneity in biogeochemistry would decrease with time following fire. In 2016 there was more than a 2-fold increase in DOC and DIC concentrations from upstream to downstream. 2016 DIC overall semivariance showed a 20-fold increase for the burned stream and a 3-fold increase for the unburned stream from April to June. We conclude that stream DIC chemistry becomes more heterogeneous with stream drying, and that heterogeneity increases following fire.
Ruth MacNeille (Primary Presenter/Author), Idaho State University, macnruth@isu.edu;
Kathleen Lohse (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Idaho State University, klohse@isu.edu;
Colden Baxter (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Idaho State University, baxtcold@isu.edu;
Sarah Godsey (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Idaho State University, godsey@isu.edu;
DeWayne Derryberry (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Idaho State University, derrdewa@isu.edu;
Emma McCorkle (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Idaho State University, mccoemma@isu.edu ;
Susan Parsons (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Idaho State University, parssusa@isu.edu ;