cbwall/Pyromania

Loading-dependent effects of burned and unburned terrestrial subsidies on aquatic ecosystems

Pyromania: Fire transforms effects of terrestrial subsidies on aquatic ecosystem structure and function

CB Wall¹, CJ Spiegel¹, EM Diaz¹, CH Tran¹, A Fabiani¹, TY Broe¹, E Perez-Coronel¹, SL Jackrel¹, N Mladenov², CC Symons³, JB Shurin¹. (2023) Global Change Biology.

¹University of California, San Diego
²San Diego State University
³University of California, Irvine

The goal of the Pyromania Project is to test how terrestrial subsides (plant biomass loading or "browning") and burning influence aquatic productivity, water quality/chemistry, and trophic transfer. We used a manipulative experiment to assess a range of plant material quantities (0-400g per tank) and fire treatment (burned vs unburned material) and the non-linearity of these effects on aquatic systems through 4 time-point samplings. We used 400L aquatic mesocosms and ran the experiment for ~90d in 2021-2022.

File Directory

The file directory contains folders and scripts (Rmd) to be run in RStudio. The folders house data, output, and raw + polished figures.

• Pyromania.Rproj = the R project for the analysis, load this first to allow code to run from correct directory in R Studio

• Pyromania Episode 1. Jump in the Fyya.Rmd = the scripts and annotated code chunks here will walk through analyses and produce outputs

• Pyromania Episode 1. Jump in the Fyya.html = the knit output of the Rmd file. Open this in any browser.

• Folders

  • data = contains raw and processed data files
  • figures = contains raw exported figures from code and processed/cleaned figures in the final.published folder
  • output = contains final tables and final figures subfolders and schematic images

Metadata

Important data files to generate maps, figures, and run models can be found in the data folder. The key data files are:

• data/DOC.TN/ The csv files here show the DOC and TN data for each time point
• data/GHG.gases/ The csv files here show the input greenhouse gas (GHG) data input for the script and the output with calculated concentrations
• data/Isotopes/ The csv files here show the replicate samples and the isotope data for C and N
• Pyro_plant material_elemental.csv for the burned and unburned plant material elemental analysis prior to adding detritus to tanks
• Pyro_water.phosph.csv for the phosphate analysis of water
• Pyro_YSI.csv is the YSI data for oxygen, temperature, and pH of tank water
• treatment.IDs.csv are the tank identity with regards to treatments