Interactions of wood accumulations, channel dynamics, and geomorphic heterogeneity within a river corridor

Natural rivers are inherently dynamic. Spatial and temporal variations in water, sediment, and wood fluxes both cause and respond to an increase in geomorphic heterogeneity within the river corridor. We analyze 16 two-kilometer river corridor segments of the Swan River in Montana, USA to examine relationships between wood accumulations (wood accumulation distribution density, count, and persistence), channel dynamism (total sinuosity and average channel migration), and geomorphic heterogeneity (density, aggregation, interspersion, and evenness of patches in the river corridor). We hypothesize that i) more dynamic river segments correlate with a greater presence, persistence, and distribution of wood accumulations; ii) years with higher peak discharge correspond with greater channel dynamism and wood accumulations; and iii) all river corridor variables analyzed play a role in explaining river corridor spatial heterogeneity. Our results suggest that decadal-scale channel dynamism, as refl..., This data was collected using field and remote sensing methods. 
To provide spatial context for the measurements of wood distributions, geomorphic heterogeneity, and channel dynamism along our 32-km study reach, we segmented the study reach at uniform 2-km intervals prior to data collection. The downstream-most 8 segments were selected based on the naturalness of the river corridor and the presence of abundant large wood accumulations in the active channel(s). We focused on these segments for ground-based measurements. We subsequently expanded analyses to include an additional eight upstream segments. These segments were included because of anecdotal evidence of at least localized timber harvest in the river corridor, bank stabilization, and large wood removal from the active channel. We included these sites to provide a greater range of values within some of the variables analyzed and thus potentially increase the power of our statistical analyses.
Wood accumulations and beaver modific..., , # Data from: Interactions of wood accumulations, channel dynamics, and geomorphic heterogeneity within a river corridor

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k0p2ngff3](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k0p2ngff3)

All of our data was derived from publicly available data sources and is reproducible. We include the locations for data acquisition as well as scripts developed in Google Earth Engine for imagery acquisition/analyses and in R for calculation of spatial heterogeneity metrics.

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset contains a .xlsx file with the raw numerical data. There are three tabs within the .xlsx file.

Tab 1 \"2013-2022\" contains the data for each of our multi-year river corridor variables and each column represents a different variable. \"Site\" corresponds with which segment the data is associated with and does not have units; \"Year\" corresponds with which imagery year data is from and the units are year; \"Wood\_Dis\_Dens\" corresponds with the distribution den...