Delta size and plant density experiments

Experiments were conducted to examine the effects of delta size and plant patchiness on channel network organization in river deltas. This dataset contains five experiments that were described in detail in Piliouras & Kim (2019) doi: 10.1002/esp.4492. The experiments in this dataset correlate to those in the paper labeled Runs 1-5 as follows, Run 1 = Run1_noAlfalfa; Run 2 = Run2_Alfalfa; Run3 = Run3_Alfalfa; Run 4 = Run3b_noAlfalfa; Run 5 = Run3b_Alfalfa. There are two unvegetated experiments: Run1_noAlfalfa and Run3b_noAlfalfa. The three vegetated experiments are Run2_Alfalfa, Run3_Alfalfa, and Run3b_Alfalfa. Runs 1, 2, and 3 all started with smaller deltas that were approximately 0.5 m in length, while the two Runs labeled 3b started with larger deltas that were approximately 1 m in length. Run 2 had dense uniform seeding of 1-2 seeds per square cm, while Runs 3 and 3b had sparse uniform seeding of ~0.5 seeds per square cm. Alfalfa was used for vegetation, and seeds were dispersed manually to cover the delta surface. All experiments were initially run at a 'flood' discharge to grow the delta to either 0.5 m in length (Runs 1-3) or 1 m in length (Runs 3b Alfalfa and noAlfalfa). After this initial delta growth stage, discharge cycled between floods and interfloods, where interfloods had half of the flood water discharge and no sediment input. Vegetated experiments were seeded in between the flood and interflood, such that interfloods could remove some seeds from the delta topset. After a cycle of flood-seeding-interflood, plants were allowed to grow for three days before beginning another flood cycle. Full details of the experimental parameters and methods can be found in Table 1 and the methods section in the paper referenced above. This dataset includes several image types for each experiment: (1) raw unprocessed time lapse photos for all floods and interfloods; (2) binary masks of delta topsets; (3) binary masks of wetted area; and (4) binary masks of vegetation cover, only for experiments that had vegetation. The time lapse images are the original photos taken during the experiments (every 15 seconds) and have not been resized, scaled, or corrected for lens distortion. Time lapse photos were rescaled to 1 mm per pixel, corrected for lens distortion, and cropped to make the various binary masks. All binary images are therefore at a resolution of 1 mm per pixel. Time lapse images were then manually masked to the shoreline and thresholded to make the topset binary images. Other binary images were made in photoshop by thresholding the color intensities for the red (wetted area) or green (vegetation) channel.