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This is a two-hundred-year long dataset of the annual average, minimum, and maximum discharges at five stations draining the Mississippi River watershed: at Clinton, IA, Herman, MO, St. Louis, MO, Louisville, KY, and Vicksburg, MS. The data are useful to test for increases in the three discharge metrics, and correlations with air pressure differentials represented in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) Index. These data may be useful for climate change assessments through modeling or synthetic assessments using other data sets. Search of archival records published by the Mississippi River Commission (Corps. of Engineers) and the U.S. Geological Survey

We estimated numbers of individuals for each species, using a backpack electroshocker with standard electrofishing procedures. We used block nets to provide closure at the ends of the segment during years when the stream reach was flowing. We used a two-pass removal depletion method to estimate abundances within segments. After placing captured fish in aerated coolers filled with stream water, we identified fish to species and categorized them by life stage (juvenile or adult) based on standard length, and then returned the fish to the same section of stream. In 2011 (the first year), size data for R. balteatus were only available for the first 30 fish caught (sampling in 2011 was focused mainly on R. osculus, and L. copei, for a mark-recapture study that is reported elsewhere). However, we recorded number captured of R. balteatus for each segment and pass of the stream reach. We calculated the ratio of adult to juvenile life stages of the first 30 fish, and used that ratio to estimate the R. balteatus life stage distribution (adult or juvenile) for additional segments for 2011 only. To estimate abundances, we used a maximum-likelihood population estimator (Microfish, Van Deventer 1998). The data has been given both as the estimate generated by the maximum-likelihood population estimate, as well as a log transformed version of the original estimate.  Climate change projections in the western United States suggest that snowpack levels and winter precipitation will decline, but mean annual precipitation levels will remain unchanged. Mountain streams that once saw a constant source of water from snowpack will begin to see large seasonal variation in flow. Increased stream intermittency will create significant conservation risks for fish species; however, few studies have examined the abundance responses of fish in high elevation streams to the shift from perennial to intermittent flow. To determine the effects of stream intermittency on fish abundance in a montane stream, we quantified changes in abundance for five species over a five-year period that exhibited extreme variation in streamflow. Responses varied by species and life stage, suggesting that the shift from perennial to intermittent flow will cause significant declines in abundance for some species. Northern leatherside chub, may experience large decreases in their range as the availability of perennial streams decreases. The study of drought effects on fish abundance will be crucial to the conservation of biodiversity in montane regions of the world. Data is provided in a .xlsx file. It can be opened on Excel, Google Sheets, or Apple Numbers.

As climate change continues to increase air temperature in high-altitude ecosystems, it has become critical to understand the controls and scales of aquatic habitat vulnerability to warming. Here we used a nested array of high-frequency sensors, and advances in time-series models, to examine spatiotemporal variation in thermal vulnerability in a model Sierra Nevada watershed. Stream thermal sensitivity to atmospheric warming fluctuated strongly over the year and peaked in spring and summer—when hot days threaten invertebrate communities most. The reach scale (~50 m) best captured variation in summer thermal regimes. Elevation, discharge, and conductivity were important correlates of summer water temperature across reaches, but upstream water temperature was the paramount driver—supporting that cascading warming occurs downstream in the network. Finally, we used our estimated summer thermal sensitivity and downscaled projections of summer air temperature to forecast end-of-the-century stream warming, when extreme drought years like 2020-2021 become the norm. We found that 25.5% of cold-water habitat may be lost under business-as-usual RCP 8.5 (or 7.9% under mitigated RCP 4.5). This estimated reduction suggests that 27.2% of stream macroinvertebrate biodiversity (11.9% under the mitigated scenario) will be stressed or threatened in what was previously cold‑water habitat. Our quantitative approach is transferrable to other watersheds with spatially‑replicated time series and illustrates the importance of considering variation in the vulnerability of mountain streams to warming over both space and time. This approach may inform watershed conservation efforts by helping identify, and potentially mitigate, sites and time windows of peak vulnerability. Please see the README.md document. Please see the README.md document.

Survival and growth of woody species in the Mediterranean are mainly restricted by water availability. We tested the hypothesis that Mediterranean species acclimate their xylem vulnerability and osmotic potential along a precipitation gradient. We studied five predominant co-occurring Mediterranean species; Quercus calliprinos, Pistacia palaestina, Pistacia lentiscus, Rhamnus lycioides, and Phillyrea latifolia, over two summers at three sites. The driest of the sites is the distribution edge for all the five species. We measured key hydraulic and osmotic traits related to drought resistance, including resistance to embolism (Ψ50) and the seasonal dynamics of water and osmotic potentials. The leaf water potentials (Ψ1) of all species declined significantly along the summer, reaching significantly lower Ψl at the end of summer in the drier sites. Surprisingly, we did not find plasticity along the drought gradient in Ψ50 or osmotic potentials. This resulted in much narrower hydraulic safety margins (HSM) in the drier sites, where some species experienced significant embolism. Our analysis indicates that reduction in HSM to null values put Mediterranean species in embolism risk as they approach their hydraulic limit near the geographic dry edge of their distribution. The PLC curves and resistance to embolism were measured using the Cavitron. The pre-dawn and midday water potentials were measured using a pressure bomb. The C13 was measured with a 13C cavity ring-down analyzer. The osmotic potential was measured using an osmometer. All methods are described in Alon et al., Acclimation limits for embolism resistance and osmotic adjustment accompany the geographic dry edge of Mediterranean species. 2023. Functional Ecology Excel

Livestock grazing is among the most intensive land-use activities in grasslands and can affect plant communities directly or indirectly via grazing-induced soil legacies. Under climate change, grasslands are threatened globally by recurrent drought. However, the extent to which drought influences grazing-induced soil legacy effects on plant biomass production and community composition remains largely unexplored. We grew five naturally co-occurring plant species (three dominants and two subordinates) in mixed communities in a glasshouse experiment in live and sterilized soil that had or had not been subjected to 19 years of grazing; these plant communities were then exposed to a subsequent drought. We tested the treatment effects on plant community biomass, proportional aboveground biomass of individual species, arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal root colonization, and soil nutrient availability. Under drought-free conditions, soils from grazed plots produced significantly higher plant aboveground and total community biomass compared to soils from ungrazed plots. In contrast, plant aboveground and total community biomass were similar between grazed and ungrazed soils under drought conditions. Similarly, soils from grazed plots increased the proportional biomass of dominant species but decreased the proportion of subordinate species; however, the proportional biomass of dominant and subordinate species was similar between grazed and ungrazed soils under drought conditions. Soil NO3--N in grazed soil was significantly higher compared to ungrazed soil. Drought dramatically increased soil NO3--N in sterilized soil and had a more pronounced increase in grazed soil than in ungrazed soil. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal root colonization from grazed soil was lower compared to ungrazed soil. Drought significantly increased the soil available phosphorus concentration, as well as plant community AM fungal root colonization. Synthesis. Our study suggests that drought can neutralize positive grazing effects on plant community biomass production via altered plant-soil interactions. Also, we found that drought can alleviate the negative effects of grazing legacies on subordinate species by reducing the competitiveness of dominant species. Our study provides new insights for understanding the underlying mechanisms of grazing effects on grassland productivity under climate change. Please see the README document and the accompanying published article: Duan, DD., Tian, Z., Wu, NN., Feng, XX., Hou, FJ., Nan, ZB., Kardol, P., and Chen, T. 2023. Drought neutralizes positive effects of long-term grazing on grassland productivity through altering plant-soil interactions. Functional Ecology. 

Climate data used in this study was drawn from the California Basin Characterization Model v8, and consists of monthly estimates of cumulative water deficit (CWD) and actual evapotranspiration (AET) from 1951 – 2016. This dataset represents a 270-m grid-based model of water balance calculations that incorporates climate inputs through PRISM data in addition to solar radiation, topographic shading, cloudiness, and soil properties to estimate evapotranspiration. Using these monthly values, we calculated the 1980 – 2009 mean CWD and AET normals, as well as mean deviations from those normals over a three-year period preceding each year of interest. Cultivated and agricultural areas were identified using the 2016 National Land Cover Database data, which estimated dominant land cover throughout North America at 30-m resolution. The proportion of cultivated area and of water features that covered each 1-km pixel were then calculated by resampling to 1-km scale. Mean housing density data was drawn from the Integrated Climate and Land-Use Scenarios (ICLUS) dataset, which provides decadal estimates of housing density throughout the United states from 1970 - 2020. As precise continuous estimates of housing density were not available, housing density within each pixel was set to the mean of its class. Annual values were estimated from decadal data using linear interpolation. Ecoregions within California (hereafter referred to as “regions”) were delineated using CalVeg ecosystem provinces data. Road data were drawn from 2018 TIGER layer data, and consisted of all primary and secondary roads across California. Electrical infrastructure data was drawn from 2020 transmission lines data. In both cases, the distance of nearest roads or transmission lines to each pixel were then calculated. Pixels which contained roads or electrical infrastructure were assigned distances of 0 km. Fire history data was drawn from FRAP fire perimeter data, which incorporates perimeters of all known timber fires >10 acres (>0.04 km2), brush fires >30 acres (>0.12 km2), and grass fires >300 acres (>1.21 km2) from 1878 – 2017. Using this data, the presence of fire in each 1-km pixel was classified in a binary fashion (e.g. 1 for burned, 0 for unburned) for each year of interest. Due to computational limits and the quantity of data involved in this study, we did not calculate the burned area within each pixel, or distinguish pixels in which a single fire occurred in a given year from those in which multiple fires occurred. This data was also used to calculate the number of years since the most recent fire within any pixel, prior to each year in which fire probability was projected. Thus, locations in which no fire was observed throughout the fire record were treated as having gone a maximum of 100 years without a fire event for the purposes of model construction. These pixels comprised 29% - 33% of data annually (depending on year), and included both locations in which fire would not be expected (such as highly xeric regions) as well as locations in fire-prone areas in which no fire had been documented within the FRAP fire perimeter data used in this study.  In the face of recent wildfires across the Western United States, it is essential that we understand both the dynamics that drive the spatial distribution of wildfire, and the major obstacles to modeling the probability of wildfire over space and time. However, it is well documented that the precise relationships of local vegetation, climate, and ignitions, and how they influence fire dynamics, may vary over space and among local climate, vegetation, and land use regimes. This raises questions not only as to the nature of the potentially nonlinear relationships between local conditions and the fire, but also the possibility that the scale at which such models are developed may be critical to their predictive power and to the apparent relationship of local conditions to wildfire. In this study we demonstrate that both local climate – through limitations posed by fuel dryness (CWD) and availability (AET) – and human activity – through housing density, roads, electrical infrastructure, and agriculture, play important roles in determining the annual probabilities of fire throughout California. We also document the importance of previous burn events as potential barriers to fire in some environments, until enough time has passed for vegetation to regenerate sufficiently to sustain subsequent wildfires. We also demonstrate that long-term and short-term climate variations exhibit different effects on annual fire probability, with short-term climate variations primarily impacting fire probability during periods of extreme climate anomaly. Further, we show that, when using nonlinear modeling techniques, broad-scale fire probability models can outperform localized models at predicting annual fire probability. Finally, this study represents a powerful tool for mapping local fire probability across the state of California under a variety of historical climate regimes, which is essential to avoided emissions modelling, carbon accounting, and hazard severity mapping for the application of fire-resistant building codes across the state of California. Please refer to Readme.txt file.

Water resources index W quantifies the potential dependence of the world's lowland areas on water resources originating in mountain areas upstream. The data cover the timeframe from the 1960s (1961–1970) to the 2040s (2041–2050) in decadal steps. Data for projections from the 2010s onwards are available for three scenario pathways (SSP1-RCP4.5, SSP2-RCP6.0, SSP3-RCP6.0) and show median results from 5 CMIP5 GCMs (GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES, IPSL-CM5A-LR, MIROC-ESM-CHEM, NorESM1‑M). The files are GeoTIFF formatted and in a regular raster of 5’×5’ (arc minutes in WGS 1984 coordinate system) The values of W can be classified using the following ranges: W ≤ -2 → Essential but vastly insufficient -2 < W < -1 → Essential but insufficient -1 ≤ W < 0 → Essential and sufficient W = 0 → No surplus from mountains 0 < W ≤ 1 → Supportive 1 < W < 2 → Minor W ≥ 2 → Negligible The values of W are rounded to four decimal places and limited to a range of -1110 to 9998. Values falling outside of that range are set to the nearest limit. he following flag values apply to W: -5555 indicates that there is no water balance surplus from the mountain area upstream, but a lowland water balance surplus; -6666 indicates that there is no water balance surplus from the mountain area upstream, and a lowland water balance deficit. Mountain areas and oceans are NODATA, large ice shields are omitted (Greenland: NODATA, Antarctica: not covered in extent). Mountain areas provide disproportionally high runoff in many parts of the world, and here we quantify for the first time their importance for water resources and food production from the viewpoint of the lowland areas downstream. The dataset maps the degree to which lowland areas potentially depend on runoff contributions from mountain areas (39% of land mass) between the 1960s and the 2040s.

Short-rotation woody crops (SRWC) have the potential to make substantial contributions to the supply of biomass feedstock for the production of biofuels and bioproducts. This study evaluated changes in the fuel quality (moisture, ash, and heating value) of stored spring harvested shrub willow (Salix spp.) and hybrid poplar (Populus spp.) chips with respect to pile protection treatments, location within the storage piles, and length of storage. Leaf-on willow and poplar were harvested in the spring, and wood chips and foliage with moisture content in the range of 42.1% to 49.9% (w.b.) were stored in piles for five months, from May to October 2016. Three protection treatments were randomly assigned to the piles. The control treatment had no cover (NC), so piles were exposed to direct solar radiation and rainfall. The second treatment had a canopy (C) installed above the piles to limit direct rainfall. The final treatment had a canopy plus a dome aeration system (CD) installed over the piles. Covering piles reduced and maintained the low moisture content in wood chip piles. Within 30 days of establishment, the moisture content in the core of the C pile decreased to less than 30%, and was maintained between 24–26% until the end of the storage period. Conversely, the moisture content in the NC piles decreased in the first two months, but then increased to the original moisture content in the core (>45cm deep) and up to 70% of the original moisture content in the shell (<45 cm deep). For all the treatments in the tested conditions, the core material dried faster than the shell material. The higher heating value (HHV) across all the treatments increased slightly from 18.31±0.06 MJ/kg at harvest to 18.76±0.21 MJ/kg at the end of the storage period. The lower heating value (LHV) increased by about 50% in the C and CD piles by the end of the storage period. However, in the NC piles, the LHV decreased by 3% in the core and 52% in the shell. Leaf-on SRWC biomass stored in piles created in late spring under climatic conditions in central and northern New York showed differing moisture contents when stored for over 60–90 days. Overhead protection could be used to preserve or improve the fuel quality in terms of the moisture content and heating value if more than two months of storage are required. However, the implementation of such management practice will depend on whether the end users are willing to pay a higher price for dryer biomass and biomass with a higher LHV. Funding to complete this research was provided by the US Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office under award number DE- EE0002992, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) Award 30713, and the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant No. 2012-68005-19703 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

In 2013 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) drilled a continuous core in the southeastern part of the Wind River Basin, Wyoming to evaluate the source rock potential of the Lower and lowermost Upper Cretaceous marine shales . The well, named the Alcova Reservoir AR-1-13, located on the northeast flank of the Alcova anticline was spud in the lower part of the Frontier Formation and ended in the upper part of the Cloverly Formation recovered core between 40.5 feet (ft) and 623 ft. Thirty-nine samples were selected to evaluate the source rock potential of the marine shales in the cored interval as determined by total organic carbon (TOC) and programmed pyrolysis analysis. Five samples are from the lower part of the Frontier Formation, 24 from the upper siliceous part of the Mowry Shale, 4 from the lower Mowry Shale (Shell Creek Shale of Eicher, 1962), and 6 from the Thermopolis Shale. TOC content was determined using the Leco combustion method after carbonate removal (see Jarvie, 1991 for details), and the programmed pyrolysis analysis was done using a Hydrocarbon Analyzer with Kinetics (HAWK, Wildcat Technologies) instrument (see Espitalie and others, 1977; Tissot and Welte, 1978; Peters, 1986; and Hunt, 1996 for detailed discussions of the pyrolysis method). The results of the analyses are presented in the data table. Relevant Citations: Eicher, D.L., 1962, Biostratigraphy of the Thermopolis, Muddy, and Shell Creek Formations, in Enyert, R.L., and Curry, W.H., eds., Symposium on Early Cretaceous rocks of Wyoming and adjacent areas: Wyoming Geological Association 17th Annual Field Conference Guidebook, p. 72-93. Espitalie, J., Madec, J.M., Tissot, B., Mennig, J.J., and Leplat, P., 1977, Source rock characterization method for petroleum exploration: Offshore Technology Conference, v. 3, no. 9, p. 439-444. Hunt, J.M., 1996, Petroleum geochemistry and geology: New York, W.H. Freeman and company, 743 p. Jarvie, D.M., 1991, Total organic carbon (TOC) analysis, in Merrill, R.K., ed., Source and migration processes and evaluation techniques: American Association of Petroleum Geologists Handbook of Petroleum Geology, p. 113-118. Peters, K.E., 1986, Guidelines for evaluating petroleum source rock using programmed pyrolysis: American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 70, no. 3, p. 318-329. Tissot, B.P., and Welte, D.H., 1978, Petroleum formation and occurrence: New York, Springer-Verlag, 538 p.