Welcome to the research compendium for the manuscript: [Atmospheric vapor and precipitation are not in isotopic equilibrium in a continental mountain environment](https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.13775). For a preprint of the manuscript, [click here](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340633542_Atmospheric_vapor_and_precipitation_are_not_in_isotopic_equilibrium_in_a_continental_mountain_environment). There is also a [supplemental website](https://wetlandscapes.gitlab.io/mountain-vapor-isotopes/) for the project. @[toc] ### Background Mountain watersheds play a disproportionately important role in regulating water availability. This makes mountains particularly important landscape features, as downstream communities and ecosystems may heavily rely on flows from these high elevation areas. Changes in climate are altering mountain hydrological processes. However, our understanding of the extent and degree of these changes is still nascent. This lack of hydrological understanding therefore makes water planning and management very difficult. Stable water isotopes are a useful tool for understanding hydrological processes. In particular, atmospheric isotopes are an important boundary condition, which can tell us much about important hydrological processes, such as evapotranspiration, source mixing, etc. A common assumption made when making inferences related to the role of atmospheric conditions on hydrological process is that the vapor in the atmosphere is in equilibrium with precipitation (the "equilibrium assumption"). This paper examines the utility and conditions under which that assumption may be valid in mountainous terrain. The study took place in Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, USA. Results suggest that the equilibrium assumption is not likely accurate under a number of conditions. One condition of particular note occurs during the summer. That is, there are large deviances away from equilibrium conditions during the growing season. This is informative, as the summer is a very hydrologically important season. This suggests that equilibrium assumption should only be used under well constrained conditions and that direct vapor measurements or improved modeling efforts are required to better capture the true vapor signal needed to use isotopes related to hydrological process inference. See the [manuscript](https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.13775) and [supplemental website](https://wetlandscapes.gitlab.io/mountain-vapor-isotopes/) for more information related to the motivations and results of the research. ### About the compendium The intent of this compendium is to provide interested parties access to the data, code, etc. related to our manuscript. In this way we hope the compendium opens up our science and provides a basis for more reproducible science. The compendium has been broken up into three "components": * __Analysis__ * __Resources__ * __Writing__ For specific information related to each of these components, please click their respective links and review their wiki entries. ### Supplemental website In addition to the manuscript and this compendium, there is also a supplemental website intended to provide some interactive features for exploring the data, as well as some other information and visualizations that could not be fit into the paper, largely for the sake of brevity. Link: https://wetlandscapes.gitlab.io/mountain-vapor-isotopes/ ### Synthesized data sets The full context of all data and code can be found within this compendium (see the Resources component), but we understand the full context might be overwhelming. Thus, to make it easier to interact with key data and results we are providing some synthesized files. The synthesized files can be downloaded directly from this compendium, here: https://osf.io/b3ckj/ (see the `Output/` directory). Metadata related to the files is provided in the wiki for that component. Alternatively, the data have also been submitted to two other resources: * [HydroShare](https://www.hydroshare.org/home/) * [waterisotopes.org](waterisotopes.org) #### HydroShare The HydroShare resource provides similar information to the synthesized data, as linked here. However, there are some useful details not included here, such as a visual representation of the spatial extent of the data. Link: https://www.hydroshare.org/resource/7c7267d19dc94e1b834d0fc82bdffa50/ #### waterisotopes.org Data have also been submitted to [waterisotopes.org](http://wateriso.utah.edu/waterisotopes/pages/spatial_db/SPATIAL_DB.html). These data focus on only the precipitation and vapor isotopes observed/measured during the study, and can thus be considered a subset of the data contained in this compendium and the HydroShare resource. ### Reproducibility One intent of this compendium is to promote some level of reproducibility. Along those lines, this project was originally designed as a single folder with a number of subdirectories (as indicated in the code). The project was also developed using a Project file (.RProj) from RStudio (hence the relative file paths in the code). Thus, if you are interested in making your own version of the analysis, we have provided a key from which folders (created on your local computer) are associated with which components/folders in this compendium: * `Data/`: `Resources/Data/` * `Figures/`: `Resources/Figures/` * `Functions/`: `Analysis/Functions/` * `Scripts/`: `Analysis/Scripts/` * `Tables/`: `Resources/Tables/` Within an RStudio project folder, simply download the `component/subcomponent/` (right) to a local `folder/` (left) and have at it!