PNNL

Abstract

River corridors are a fundamental element of the Earth system that integrate surface water, the subsurface, as well as the land and vegetation surrounding rivers. These integrated systems provide a broad range of services to human society that arise through interactions among biological, physical and chemical processes. Much of what happens in river corridors starts with hydrology, whereby the input and flow of water through the system connects biology with chemistry. Temporally and spatially variable inputs through precipitation, runoff, and groundwater flow lead to a very dynamic and highly coupled systems. To facilitate broad understanding of these very dynamic and critical systems, we launched the Worldwide Hydrobiogeochemistry Observation Network for Dynamic River System (WHONDRS, pronounced like ‘wonders’). Led by a team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), WHONDRS is a consortium of researchers and other interested parties that aims to understand connections among dynamic hydrology, biogeochemistry, and microbiology in river corridors from local to global scales. WHONDRS aims to galvanize a global community around understanding these connections to ultimately provide the scientific basis for improved management of dynamic river corridors throughout the world. WHONDRS enables the broader science community to work collectively towards generalizable understanding of river corridor systems. This is achieved by providing free access to novel instrumentation, molecular analysis, and well-curated data. A primary (though not exclusive) focus of WHONDRS is understanding the influences of sustained, high-frequency fluctuations in stream or river depth (referred to as ‘river stage’). In this case, high-frequency refers to daily or sub-daily fluctuations, and sustained indicates that these fluctuations occur throughout a significant portion of the year or growing season. There are a number of factors that result in sustained, high-frequency stage fluctuations, such as the operation of hydroelectric dams, tides, evapotranspiration from vegetation, wastewater discharge, water extraction for human use, solar-driven glacial melt, and wind-driven fluctuations in very large lakes. WHONDRS is pursuing a variety of science questions in the context of sustained, high-frequency stage fluctuations. These questions span biological, chemical, and physical processes to provide integrated understanding the system. Some examples include impacts of high-frequency stage fluctuations on (1) metabolites and microbiomes in surface water and subsurface pore water, and (2) hydrologic exchange between surface water and the subsurface. As noted above, however, WHONDRS is not exclusively focused on high-frequency stage fluctuations. For example, WHONDRS is pursuing a global survey of surface and subsurface metabolites and microbiomes. WHONDRS is also taking a staged approach whereby additional river corridor features will be investigated through time, such as vegetation and sediment transport. At the core of WHONDRS is providing the community free and easy access to the resources needed to study river corridors. A central tenet of the WHONDRS philosophy is that resources, knowledge, and data belong to the community as a whole—not to individual researchers—and that science advances more rapidly and more robustly through community ownership. As such, all data produced will be publicly available without any restriction on use and without a waiting period. WHONDRS is currently working with both the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL)—where metabolomic analyses are being conducted—and the ESS-DIVE data archive funded by the U.S. Department of Energy that is dedicated to environmental data (http://ess-dive.lbl.gov/).