Metabolic-hydraulic modelData

The data contained in this workbook were compiled to investigate the relationship between hydrology of the Colorado River and ecosystem metabolism parameters (i.e., primary production and ecosystem respiration). The workbook contains data exploring the link between Colorado River discharges and water velocity, which are depicted in figure 2 of the associated manuscript. The workbook also contains data pertaining to calibration of the hydraulic model used for modeling discharge and metabolism, and these data are depicted in figure 3 of the manuscript. Also contained are data pertaining to air-water gas exchange rates (k600) that were estimated from the coupled hydraulic model (from figures 4 and 5 of the manuscript). The workbook also contains data used to evaluate the performance of the coupled model during steady and unsteady flows, and these data are depicted in figure 6 of the manuscript. Finally, the workbook contains data showing the joint probability distribution for metabolism parameters (i.e., primary production and ecosystem respiration) for both the Eularian dynamic flow model and the simple LaGrangian steady flow model. These data are depicted in figure 8 of the manuscript. The purpose of these data are to evaluate the efficacy of a new modeling framework for estimating ecosystem metabolism in rivers where the discharge is unsteady. Existing modeling frameworks for estimating ecosystem metabolism in river require that discharge is steady across daily time scales. This assumption of constant discharge is violated in the Colorado River owing the hourly changes in discharge associated with hydropower generation from Glen Canyon Dam. As such, we developed a new modeling framework that can accommodate the unsteady flow conditions that are inherent to the Colorado River, and the data in this workbook highlight the effectiveness and power of this new modeling framework.

These data are associated with the journal manuscript: R. A. Payn , R. O. Hall, Jr., T. A. Kennedy, G. C. Poole, L. A. Marshall, 2017, A coupled metabolic-hydraulic model and calibration scheme for estimating whole-river metabolism during dynamic flow conditions: Limnology and Oceanography, v. (online), doi: 10.1002/lom3.10204.