Abstract
While temporary streams account for more than half of the global discharge, high spatiotemporal resolution data on the three main hydrological states (dry streambed, standing water, and flowing water) of temporary stream remains sparse. This study presents a low-cost, multi-sensor system to monitor the hydrological state of temporary streams in mountainous headwaters. The monitoring system consists of an Arduino microcontroller board combined with an SD-card data logger shield, and four sensors: an electrical resistance (ER) sensor, temperature sensor, float switch sensor, and flow sensor. The monitoring system was tested in a small mountainous headwater catchment, where it was installed on multiple locations in the stream network, during two field seasons (2016 and 2017). Time-lapse cameras were installed at all monitoring system locations to evaluate the sensor performance. The field tests showed that the monitoring system was power efficient (running for nine months on four AA batteries at a five-minute logging interval) and able to reliably log data (<1% failed data logs). Of the sensors, the ER sensor (99.9% correct state data and 90.9% correctly timed state changes) and flow sensor (99.9% correct state data and 90.5% correctly timed state changes) performed best (2017 performance results). A setup of the monitoring system with these sensors can provide long-term, high spatiotemporal resolution data on the hydrological state of temporary streams, which will help to improve our understanding of the hydrological functioning of these important systems.
Highlights
There are three main hydrological states for temporary streams: dry streambed, standing water, and flowing water [1,2]
The microcontroller board and data logger shield combination was chosen over the conventional, off-the-shelf data loggers that were used in previous temporary stream monitoring studies [49,50,61,62]
While for this study the microcontroller board and data logger combination was programmed as an interval logger, for future studies it could be programmed as a state or event logger
Summary
There are three main hydrological states for temporary streams: dry streambed, standing water, and flowing water [1,2]. Temporary streams are valuable ecosystems at the transition between aquatic and terrestrial environments. While they are most common in arid and semi-arid regions, temporary streams are found in all climatic zones around the world [4,5], often in the headwaters of perennial streams [6,7]. Estimates suggest that their total length and discharge account for at least half of the global stream network [8]. Water abstraction, and land-use change alter the flow regimes of perennial streams, the number of temporary streams is expected to increase in the near future [4,9]
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