Challenges and opportunities of long-term continuous metabolism

Background/Question/Methods

Recent advances in dissolved oxygen sensing and modeling have made continuous measurements of whole-stream metabolism relatively easy to make, allowing ecologists to quantify and evaluate stream ecosystem health at expanded temporal and spatial scales.  Long-term monitoring of continuous stream metabolism will enable a better understanding of the integrated and complex effects of large-scale change (e.g., land-use, climate, atmospheric deposition, invasive species, etc.) on stream ecosystem function.  In addition to their value in the particular streams measured, information derived from long-term data will improve the ability to extrapolate from shorter-term data.

With the need to better understand drivers and responses of whole-stream metabolism come difficulties in interpreting the results.  Long-term trends will encompass physical changes in stream morphology and flow regime (e.g., variable flow conditions and changes in channel structure) combined with changes in biota.  Additionally long-term data sets will require careful quantification of errors and uncertainties, as well as propagation of error as a result of the calculation of metabolism metrics.  Parsing of continuous data and the choice of modeling approaches can also have a large influence on results and on error estimation.  The two main modeling challenges include 1) obtaining unbiased, low-error daily estimates of gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER), and 2) interpreting GPP and ER measurements over extended time periods.

Results/Conclusions

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), in partnership with academic and government scientists, has begun to tackle several of these challenges as it prepares for the collection and calculation of 30 years of continuous whole-stream metabolism data.  NEON is a national-scale research platform that will use consistent procedures and protocols to standardize measurements across the United States, providing long-term, high-quality, open-access data from a connected network to address large-scale change.   NEON infrastructure will support 36 aquatic sites across 19 ecoclimatic domains.  Sites include core sites, which remain for 30 years, and relocatable sites, which move to capture regional gradients. NEON will measure continuous whole-stream metabolism in conjunction with aquatic, terrestrial and airborne observations, allowing researchers to link stream ecosystem function with landscape and climatic drivers encompassing short to long time periods (i.e., decades).