A multi-year case study highlighting the influence of hydrological conditions on epidemic dynamics in a natural plant pathosystem

The scale of influence of hydrological and thermal conditions on disease remains uncertain for most wild plant pathosystems, thus restricting our ability to predict the impacts of climate change. Analysis of the spatiotemporal spread of a fungal rust pathogen throughout four naturally occurring flax populations over the course of five growing seasons reveals relationships between epidemic magnitude and snow cover, relative humidity and temperature, as well as an unexpectedly significant effect of severe drought on disease progression. These results indicate that climate change will likely disrupt wild plant epidemics, and points to a need for further epidemiological studies characterizing the effects of environmental conditions on population-level disease dynamics in natural pathosystems., A comprehensive description of the study design and methodologies used are delineated in the following paper: 
Miller, I.F., Jiranek, J., Brownell, M. et al. Predicting the effects of climate change on the cross-scale epidemiological dynamics of a fungal plant pathogen. Sci Rep 12, 14823 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18851-z, , # A multi-year case study highlighting the influence of hydrological conditions on epidemic dynamics in a natural plant pathosystem

Please reach out to Keenan Duggal ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])) with any questions about the data and/or scripts associated with this manuscript:

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.98sf7m0tc](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.98sf7m0tc)

## Description of the data and file structure

This ecological study was purely observational, and as such no experimental efforts were taken during the collection of data.

### Overview:

There are four field sites where observations of flax rust epidemiology were made. They are first described in 

`Miller, I.F., Jiranek, J., Brownell, M. et al. Predicting the effects of climate change on the cross-scale epidemiological dynamics of a fungal plant pathogen. Sci Rep 12, 14823 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18851-z` as follows: 

* \"The lowest site, ‘cement creek’ (CC; approximately 38.82156°...