Plain English Summary

The exchange of gasses between water and air is important to the budgets of carbon, nutrients, and pollutants. This exchange is driven, in part, by the turbulent energy at the air–water interface. Turbulent energy at the air–water interface scales with the gas transfer velocity (k), which can be measured in streams through various methods.

We performed a metadata analysis of studies that have measured k in streams using direct gas tracer releases. We evaluated models that predict k based on stream morphology. We found that models that use slope and velocity to predict k perform reasonably well and are consistent with general theory. We also used the data set to provide new stream hydraulic equations that predict stream morphology (width, depth, velocity) based on discharge.

Abstract

Scaling is an integral component of ecology and earth science. To date, the ability to determine the importance of air–water gas exchange across large spatial scales is hampered partly by our ability to scale the gas transfer velocity and stream hydraulics.

Here we report on a metadata analysis of 563 direct gas tracer release experiments that examines scaling laws for the gas transfer velocity. We found that the gas transfer velocity scales with the product of stream slope and velocity, which is in alignment with theory on stream energy dissipation. In addition to providing equations that predict the gas transfer velocity based on stream hydraulics, we used our hydraulic data set to report a new set of hydraulic exponents and coefficients that allow the prediction of stream width, depth, and velocity based on discharge.

Finally, we report a new table of gas Schmidt number dependencies to allow researchers to estimate a gas transfer velocity using our equation for many gasses of interest.

Citation

Raymond, P. A., C. J. Zappa, D. Butman, T. L. Bott, C. Potter, P. Mulholland, A. E. Laursen, W. H. McDowell, and D. Newbold (2012): Scaling the gas transfer velocity and hydraulic geometry in streams and small rivers. Limnology and Oceanography: Fluids and Environments 2:41-53. DOI: 10.1215/21573689-1597669