Summer and winter invertebrate and physicochemical data from the Coweeta Hydrologic Lab

This resource contains data for aquatic invertebrates collected from leaf litterbags, which were deployed in 11 streams at the Coweeta Hydrologic Lab (Macon County, North Carolina, USA) during winter and summer months in 2017-2018. Litterbags consisted of fine-mesh bags (250µm) attached to coarse-mesh bags (5mm), each containing Rhododendron maximum leaf litter. The litterbags were deployed for two-month periods, which were as follows: 19 October - 11 or 18 December, 2017; 15 November - 5 January 2017-2018; 9 May - 5 July 2018; and 5 July - 31 August 2018. We collected invertebrate samples from the >1mm size fraction from 3 coarse-fine litterbag pairs incubated in each of our streams during the aforementioned 2-month periods. Invertebrates were preserved in ethanol, identified, and classified into functional feeding groups based on classifications in Merritt et al. 2019. We identified invertebrates in the "shredder" functional feeding group to genus and all other insects to family (Merritt et al. 2019). We also measured invertebrate lengths in mm and converted these lengths to masses using information from Benke 1999. This resource also contains daily temperature and discharge data, litter breakdown data from the coarse-mesh bags associated with the invertebrate data, and weekly nutrient concentration data from the streams during the study period. Discharge data was provided by the USFS Coweeta Hydrologic Lab and can also be found here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/rds/archive/catalog/RDS-2016-0025-2

Discharge data citation:

USFS Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory. 2023. Daily streamflow data for gauged watersheds at Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, North Carolina. 2nd Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2016-0025-2