4.2 Generalizability of relationships between allometry and watershed characteristics
Consistent with findings in Figure 2, the spatial distribution of allometric scaling of hyporheic respiration (Figure 3) and its relationships to various watershed characteristics (Figure 4, Figure 5) suggest some common patterns between the study basins, which may generalize to other basins, but also identify several basin-specific behaviors. Specifically, maximum elevation shared the most mutual information with cumulative respiration for low-HEF reaches (Figure 4), with relatively strong linear relationships in both basins (Figure 5). This finding matches previous reports that elevation organizes biogeochemical processes related to metabolism in other watersheds, including greenhouse gas concentrations and ratios, and oxygen content (Chiriboga and Borges 2023). We also observed consistent relationships to precipitation for high HEF quantiles, consistent with other findings that precipitation influences hyporheic processes, including respiration (Leggieri et al. 2013; Son et al. 2022b; Coulson et al. 2022).
Although it is beyond the scope of this study, we suggest that common responses to general watershed characteristics like elevation and precipitation may also organize hyporheic respiration scaling in other river basins. However, we also note that there are distinct differences in respiration allometry between the study basins, notably in spatial patterns (Figure 3). Thus, while the relationships we observed in our two basins may be transferable to others, basin-specific patterns may limit our ability to generalize a predictive understanding of hyporheic respiration allometry to other basins.