Can environmental flows moderate riparian invasions? The influence of seedling morphology and density on scour losses in experimental floods

Predicting plant mortality during floods remains a key area of uncertainty for both river managers and ecologists, particularly how flood hydraulics and sediment dynamics interact with the plants’ own traits to influence their vulnerability to scour and burial. The three datasets in this archive were collected from a series of flume experiments that took place at the University of California, Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station. The flume experiments are part of a larger study, funded by NSF (EAR#1024820) that quantified reciprocal effects and feedbacks between riparian seedlings and river morphodynamics, using sand-bed rivers in the U.S. Southwest as the reference system. To quantify different plant species’ vulnerability to flooding across a range of plant sizes, patch densities, and sediment condition (equilibrium transport versus sediment deficit), we ran 10 experimental floods using live seedlings of cottonwood and tamarisk, which have contrasting morphologies. The three datasets include: 1. Plant responses (dislodgement or burial) to the experimental floods and plant size (e.g. stem height, root length, and dry weight) for all plants tested during the flume runs (N = 484, comprising 326 cottonwood and 158 tamarisk); 2. Plant morphological traits (e.g. frontal area, bending force, and root diameter) for a random subset of seedlings (n = 90, comprising 47 cottonwood and 43 tamarisk); and 3. Frontal area density for the same seedling subset.