ABSTRACT:

Shane Creek, located north of Kings Creek in the Konza Prairie Biological Station (outlet location: 39.11522, -96.55838; 434 ha), is a native tallgrass prairie located in the Konza Prairie Biological Station, a long term ecological research station that has been in operation since 1980. Shane’s Creek is annually cattle-grazed and burned every three years. Konza is located in the Flint Hills of northern Kansas. In 2023, the outlet of the stream wet up in March and dried down in July; in 2024, the outlet of the stream wet up in March and dried down in September. Average annual precipitation for this site is 904.7 mm.
These data were collected in support of the sampling goals of the Aquatic Intermittency effects on Microbiomes in Streams (AIMS) Project. This study took place in Shane’s Creek (434 ha) at the Konza Prairie Biological Station, a long term ecological research station that has been in operation since 1980. Shane’s Creek is annually cattle-grazed and burned every three years. Konza is located in the Flint Hills of northern Kansas. In 2023, the outlet of the stream wet up in March and dried down in July; in 2024, the outlet of the stream wet up in March and dried down in September. Average annual precipitation for this site is 35.62 inches.

We constructed a wooden stream diversion structure halfway down a 380m reach containing four pools and three riffles above and below the structure. The structure had 4 1-foot diameter holes installed with PVC couplers. Four 130m corrugated flexible tubes were laid out from the diversion structure to the bottom of the impact reach. We deployed 20 STICs throughout the control and impact reach to quantify the extent of drying using rebar. Construction and preparation occurred in February and March, when the stream was dry, to minimize construction-related disturbances to the experimental sampling. Prior to experimental dry down, water was able to flow from upstream (control reach) to downstream (impact reach) through the holes. We obtained pre-dry down sampling to collect a reference point for both the control and impact reaches. These “pre-dry week X” samples were collected from April to mid-July due to multiple flooding events (April 25th, June 26th, and July 3rd) that disrupted the experimental setup and required redeployment of experimental structures and equipment. During the experimental dry down (“dry week X” samples), we attached the tubes to the couplers in the diversion structure. Flow was diverted around the impact reach into the downstream watershed for five weeks, during which we collected weekly samples. Following the final forced drying sampling, tubes were cut from their couplers to allow flow to resume in the impact reach (“re-wet week X” samples). After 6 hours, we performed day 0 re-wet sampling. Twenty four hours later, we performed day 1 re-wet sampling. One week later, the stream began to naturally dry down in both the control and impact reaches, and collected weekly natural dry down samples for two weeks (“natural dry down week X” samples).

This resource contains the YSI field data from AIMS approaches 1 (maintenance samples ~every 3 weeks), 2 (seasonal sampling), and 3 (syntopic sampling event) samplings at King's Creek. During sampling, a YSI Pro1030 Waterproof Handheld meter was placed in the stream and numbers were allowed to stabilize while water sampling took place. Data is not available when the site was dry - as noted by the flow_state column. In addition, some sampling events lacked a YSI handheld and data is therefore missing.

ABSTRACT:

This study was conducted on the South Fork of the Kings Creek research watershed (outlet location: 39.092281, -96.58719) within Konza Prairie Biological Station (KBPS) near Manhattan (KS, USA). At the USGS gage located on the mainstem (06879560; est. 1979), Kings Creek is a 5th order intermittent stream draining 1059-ha of tallgrass prairie that is actively managed using controlled buns at varying frequencies (1-20 year return intervals) and grazing by bison or cattle. Kings Creek ranges in elevation from 338 to 430 m above sea level and drains into the Kansas River. The region is within a midwestern continental climate, with temperatures ranging from 4 to 22°C and mean annual precipitation averaging about 780 mm/yr.

This site lies within the Flint Hills ecoregion of eastern KS and northeastern OK, has a mean annual temperature of 11.7ºC (1983-2020), and 811 mm annual precipitation (1983-2020) with high interannual variability and an estimated 75% of annual precipitation occurring during late spring and early summer (Hayden 1998, Sadayappan et al. 2023). The AIMS study catchment, the South Fork of Kings Creek, is grazed by bison year-round, and includes sub-catchments with variable prescribed burn history, but the entire study area was burned in early April 2021. The riparian vegetation is deciduous gallery forest and the highest portion of the landscape is tallgrass prairie (Dodds et al. 2004) dominated by warm-season grasses, though woody encroachment has occurred in most subwatersheds (Sadayappan et al. 2023)*. The underlying bedrock of the Flint Hills ecotone is characterized as limestone, mudstone, and shale with predominately silty clay loam soils that rest atop (Hayden 1998, Vero et al. 2018).

This resource contains the YSI field data from AIMS approaches 1 (maintenance samples ~every 3 weeks), 2 (seasonal sampling), and 3 (syntopic sampling event) samplings at King's Creek. During sampling, a YSI Pro1030 Waterproof Handheld meter was placed in the stream and numbers were allowed to stabilize while water sampling took place. Data is not available when the site was dry - as noted by the flow_state column. In addition, some sampling events lacked a YSI handheld and data is therefore missing.

ABSTRACT:

The following standard operating procedure (SOP) was created for the the Aquatic Intermittency effects on Microbiomes in Streams (AIMS), an NSF EPSCoR funded project (OIA 2019603) seeking to explore the impacts of stream drying on downstream water quality across Kansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Idaho, and Mississippi. AIMS integrates datasets on hydrology, microbiomes, macroinvertebrates, and biogeochemistry in three regions (Mountain West, Great Plains, and Southeast Forests) to test the overarching hypothesis that physical drivers (e.g., climate, hydrology) interact with biological drivers (e.g., microbes, biogeochemistry) to control water quality in intermittent streams. An overview of the AIMS project can be found here: https://youtu.be/HDKIBNEnwdM
This protocol will describe the process of collecting samples for water chemistry in the field. This protocol was used for all Approaches in AIMS wherein field water samples were collected.