Associations between Landscape Factors, Intermittency Classes, and Hydrologic Metrics
We observed moderate associations among environmental covariates and whether streams fully dried, or only dried to isolated pools (Figure 4), although none exhibited statistically significant differences (Table 4). Streams that fully dried had generally smaller watershed areas and lower slopes, and higher forested cover ratios.
Similarly, hydrologic metrics were only moderately associated with landscape factors (Table 5). Watershed area was correlated with metrics of skew (0.61), reversals (0.73) and pulse count (0.52). Reversals were correlated with watershed slope and water table depth, while pulse count was correlated with percent forest cover. Interestingly, low flow metrics were less correlated with landscape factors than metrics associated with flow variability and high flow.