Monitoring ephemeral, intermittent and perennial streamflow: a dataset from 182 sites in the Attert catchment, Luxembourg

Abstract

The temporal and spatial dynamics of streamflow presence and absence is considered vital information to many hydrological and ecological studies. Measuring the duration of active streamflow and dry periods in the channel allows us to classify the degree of intermittency of streams. We used different sensing techniques including time-lapse imagery, electric conductivity and stage measurements to generate a combined dataset of presence and absence of streamflow within various nested sub-catchments in the Attert catchment, Luxembourg. The first sites of observation were established in 2013 and successively extended to a total number of 182 in 2016 as part of the project Catchments As Organized Systems (CAOS). Temporal resolution ranged from 5 to 15 min intervals. Each single dataset was carefully processed and quality controlled before the time interval was homogenised to 30 min. The dataset provides valuable information of the dynamics of a meso-scale stream network in space and time. This can be used to test and evaluate hydrologic models but also for the assessment of the intermittent stream ecosystem in the Attert basin. The dataset presented in this paper is available at the online repository of the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ, https://doi.org/10.5880/FIDGEO.2019.010, Kaplan et al., 2019).