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The Lamprey River watershed, located in southeastern New Hampshire (USA), drains 554 km² of low elevation land before discharging into the Great Bay Estuary (Wymore and others 2021). The watershed is classified as suburban with mixed land-use that includes forests (73%), wetlands (10%), development (7%), and agriculture (NOAA Coastal Change Analysis Program 2016). We selected four distinct sites within the watershed to capture the dynamics of both tributaries and the mainstem, while accounting for variations in land use, land cover, and nutrient availability. Wednesday Hill Brook (WHB) is a 1st-order stream that drains a residential landscape and has the highest NO3 concentrations among the sites due to a high density of septic systems (Flint and McDowell 2015). Dowst Cate Forest (DCF) is a 2nd-order stream draining a headwater wetland and forested landscape and is characterized by the highest concentrations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC). The two main stem Lamprey River sites, LMP72 and LMP73, exhibit moderate concentrations of both DOC and NO3 and are located approximately 1 km apart. LMP72 is located at a low-head run-of-river dam while LMP73 is free-flowing water downstream of the reservoir. Our dataset includes weekly water chemistry and dissolved gas data collected from April 2014 through May 2023, except for DCF where data collection ended in 2021, resulting in a total of 1,179 observations across the four different sites. 

Abstract Climate and atmospheric deposition interact with watershed properties to drive dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations in lakes. Because drivers of DOC concentration are inter-related and interact, it is challenging to assign a single dominant driver to changes in lake DOC concentration across spatiotemporal scales. Leveraging forty years of data across sixteen lakes, we used structural equation modeling to show that the impact of climate, as moderated by watershed characteristics, has become more dominant in recent decades, superseding the influence of sulfate deposition that was observed in the 1980s. An increased percentage of winter precipitation falling as rain was associated with elevated spring DOC concentrations, suggesting a mechanistic coupling between climate and DOC increases that will persist in coming decades as northern latitudes continue to warm. Drainage lakes situated in watersheds with fine-textured, deep soils and larger watershed areas exhibit greater variability in lake DOC concentrations compared to both seepage and drainage lakes with coarser, shallower soils, and smaller watershed areas. Capturing the spatial variability in interactions between climatic impacts and localized watershed characteristics is crucial for forecasting lentic carbon and nutrient dynamics, with implications for lake ecology and drinking water quality. 

Abstract Ethical guidelines have provided a cornerstone for morally appropriate research on human or other vertebrate animal subjects since at least 1945. By contrast, although there are environmental impacts associated with all science research activities (including field, laboratory, and computational projects), no comprehensive guiding framework to determine environmentally responsible research practices has been proposed. Drawing from existing models within social, medical, and animal sciences, we propose a framework for explicitly incorporating environmentally focused ethics into scientific research. The Environmental Responsibility 5‐R Framework (ER⁵F) is centered around Recognition, Refinement, Reduction, Replacement, and Restoration. ER⁵F starts with Recognizing that research can have environmental consequences, while each subsequent “R” serves as an opportunity for acknowledging, evaluating, and mitigating the environmental impacts of scientific research. These R's include: Refining research questions, Reducing the resources and energy consumed, Replacing materials with sustainable options and altering methods, and in the case of field research, Restoring an environment to mitigate any harm done. By introducing this novel and approachable framework, we strive to promote enhanced awareness across the entire scientific community by encouraging researchers to recognize their responsibility and identify potential mitigation opportunities for the environmental consequences of their research activities. We affirm that in doing so, scientists can more effectively balance the dual goals of maximizing their novel research outputs while minimizing possible harm to the environment.