3.3 Relating allometric behavior to watershed
characteristics
We calculated mutual information to understand which watershed
characteristics in Figure S1 (elevation, precipitation, and land-cover)
share the most information with cumulative respiration (Figure 4). We
selected HEF quantile groupings with consistent scaling behavior between
basins (Q10-30: Uncertain, and Q80-100: Super-linear) to assess whether
basin or scaling had more consistent relationships to respiration.
Maximum elevation consistently shared the most information with
cumulative respiration (i.e., shared the strongest spatial relationship
with respiration as quantified by mutual information) for Uncertain
(Q10-Q30) quantiles in both basins, followed by forested land-cover
(Figure 4). Precipitation shared the most information with cumulative
respiration for Super-linear Q80-100) quantiles in both basins, followed
by maximum elevation in the WRB, and human-influenced land-cover in the
YRB. The consistency in highest mutual information between HEF quantiles
(maximum elevation for Q10-30 and precipitation for Q80-100) indicates
these factors may share similar relationships to allometric scaling
patterns in the two study basins, which suggests the potential to
generalize these relationships to other basins.