Community Engagement and Distributed Sampling to Accelerate Hydrobiogeochemical Discovery across River Corridors

Characterizing river corridors across spatiotemporal scales requires collection and synthesis of data across diverse environments while balancing the resource costs of distributed studies. Scientific innovation is enhanced by multidisciplinary perspectives and community efforts. These needs were considered in tandem to create the Worldwide Hydrobiogeochemistry Observation Network for Dynamic River Systems (WHONDRS), which is founded upon an ICON framework that integrates biological, physical, and chemical processes across scales; coordinates with consistent methods; is open across the research lifecycle; and networks with collaborators. WHONDRS is a global consortium that relies on a community-enabled, distributed sampling approach to understand coupled hydrologic, biogeochemical, and microbial functions in river corridors. In 2019, WHONDRS created a study of global river corridors to evaluate how ecosystem features, microbial communities, and metabolomes interact in surface water and shallow sediments. As with prior WHONDRS studies, WHONDRS developed sampling protocols that were made openly available via YouTube, sent sampling kits to collaborators, provided a suite of biogeochemical analyses, and made all data open access and FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). To enhance openness across the research lifecycle and bring in diverse perspectives, during study design WHONDRS held multiple discussion-based webinars with the collaborators who volunteered to collect samples. These allowed WHONDRS to adapt the study based on community input and led to protocol modifications, introduction of new data types, and the formation of a new type of involvement with WHONDRS in which collaborators volunteered to analyze WHONDRS-provided sample aliquots. The 2019 study collected samples at 97 river corridors in 8 countries within a 6-week period, added 9 data types based on community requests, and sent aliquots to 4 collaborator laboratories. Successfully creating opportunities for openness during study design has led WHONDRS to pursue opportunities for openness after data collection, including crowdsourced analysis, interpretation, and publishing.