WHONDRS S19S: Global River Sediment Chemistry, Respiration, and Microbial Data

97 globally distributed river corridor systems were sampled in the summer of 2019, with surficial streambed sediments collected at upstream, midstream, and downstream locations. The dataset includes high-resolution FTICR-MS characterization of dissolved organic matter, dissolved organic carbon, aerobic respiration rates, elemental composition, grain size, total nitrogen and organic carbon content, bacterial abundance, and stable isotopes. It was produced by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and has been updated multiple times, most recently in July 2025.

Use Cases

• Modeling relationships between sediment grain size and biogeochemical function based on the provided physical property data.
• Analyzing the molecular composition of dissolved organic matter using the high-resolution FTICR-MS data.
• Investigating correlations between bacterial abundance and sediment respiration rates from the laboratory incubation results.
• Studying global patterns in river sediment carbon and nitrogen content and stable isotopes.

Strengths

• Data from 97 globally distributed river corridor sites provides a broad spatial scope.
• Includes multiple complementary data types (e.g., FTICR-MS, XRF, flow cytometry) for a multi-faceted analysis.
• The dataset has a documented version history with updates through July 2025, indicating ongoing curation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific modeling tasks.
• The description notes a known data correction for column headers related to carbon and nitrogen percentages.

Provenance

Source

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL)

Collection Method

Field campaign collecting surficial streambed sediments and subsequent laboratory analyses.

Time Range

Samples collected between July and September 2019.

Freshness

Last updated in July 2025 according to the description.

Geography

Globally distributed river corridor systems.