Alexander Brooks

and 2 more

Water-mediated linkages that connect landscape components are collectively referred to as hydrologic connectivity. In river-floodplain systems, quantifying hydrologic connectivity enables descriptions of hydrologic function that emerge from complex, heterogeneous interactions of underlying geomorphic, climatic and biologic controls. Here, we measure hydrologic connectivity using field indicators and develop a continuous connectivity metric that represents a vector strength between a source along the North St Vrain river to ten surface water target sites within the river-floodplain system. To measure this connectivity strength, we analyzed hydrometric, injected conservative tracers, and natural occurring geochemical and microbial indicators across streamflows in 2018. We developed empirical models of hydrologic connectivity as a function of river stage to predict daily connectivity strength across multiple floodplain sites for five years between May and September of 2016-2020. Three sites were either consistently connected or disconnected to the river, while seven varied across time in their hydrologic connectivity strength. Of the sites with variable connectivity, some disconnected very quickly and others had a prolonged disconnection phase. By scaling site dynamics to the system scale, we found across-system hydrologic connectivity always increased with streamflow while across-system variance in hydrologic connectivity peaked at intermediate streamflow. At sites with intermittent connections to the river, river stage disconnection thresholds were variable (308 to 650 mm) and their connectivity dynamics were sensitive to inter-annual variation in streamflows, suggesting that future connectivity behavior under climate change will depend on how flow durations change across a range of flow states.