Temperature regimes of northern Yellowstone streams

Description

This data is from streams and their riparian zones in northern Yellowstone National Park from summer 2018-2020. We were testing the impact of vegetation status on stream temperatures, as driven by terrestrial wildlife dynamics. Some streams were dominated by woody vegetation (where it was allowed to recover from ungulate browse) and others were dominated by herbaceous vegetation (where there was still high ungulate browse). We also assessed the impact of a suite of other variables, including hydrology, elevation, morphology, etc. We hypothesized that streams with woody riparian vegetation would have lower average maximum and mean daily stream temperatures throughout the summer due to more shade and due to potentially narrower widths associated with deeper and more stable rooting structure. We also expected more diel temperature variation in the streams with herbaceous riparian vegetation due to greater variation in energy exchange – both inputs and losses (Dugdale et al., 2018). We expected streams with greater groundwater input to have lower daily means and maximums (because groundwater is generally cooler than surface water in summer) and less diel variation (due to the input of water at a constant temperature). Mean daily temperatures varied during summer and were not consistently correlated with riparian vegetation state. However, streams with herbaceous vegetation had higher summer maximum temperatures than streams dominated by willows, with greater differences in later summer. Throughout summer, daily stream temperature ranges and coefficients of variation were up to five-times greater in herbaceous sites.

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