Large wood decay state and piece shape in river corridors

We characterize the decay and piece shape categories of downed large wood in channels and floodplains of 7 river corridors in Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, and Utah to evaluate how proportions of wood in these categories varied with respect to location (channel, floodplain), disturbance history, wood recruitment (fluvial transport, tree fall), and biome. We hypothesized that decay state and piece shape would differ more between floodplain and channel locations in river corridors with no recent inundation-related large wood transport on the floodplain than in river corridors with recent floodplain inundation. Results support our hypothesis with respect to decay but not piece shape. Decay state differs more between floodplain and channel locations in river corridors with no recent disturbance. These results suggest the benefits of retaining and reintroducing decayed wood in floodplains., At each site, we characterized at least 100 pieces of downed, dead wood within the river corridor. We characterized each piece with respect to location (active channel, floodplain), mode of recruitment to the river corridor (fluvial transport, treefall), decay state (5 categories, after Robison and Beschta, 1990 and Waddell, 2002), piece shape (4 categories in a classification developed for this study), and length and diameter. The individuals who assigned decay and shape categories agreed on characteristics during an initial field visit and used photographs of example pieces in each category from the first field site for calibration at field sites visited subsequently. Although conifer forests of Colorado and Montana are unlikely to have major branches on most wood pieces, we included major branches as a category to facilitate use of this ranking in forests with substantial numbers of deciduous trees, such as the Utah and North Carolina sites. We delineated floodplain boundaries based ..., # Data from: Large wood decay state and piece shape in river corridors

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.573n5tbmd](10.5061/dryad.573n5tbmd)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data contain information on individual pieces of large wood (> 1 m in length and 10 cm in diameter) from 7 river corridors (channels and floodplains) in Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, and Utah. These were collected in an effort to describe the diversity of decay states and piece shapes. Decaying wood provides habitat and nutrients for diverse organisms as well as subsidies to floodplain soils. 

### Files and variables

#### File: decay_key.csv

**Description:** Key describing variables, units, and format of data

#### File: decay.csv

**Description:** Data used in the analyses associated with publication,