Physical and environmental measurements from river sites in the Cordillera Vilcanota and Cordillera Blanca ranges of the Peruvian Andes, 2019-2020
https://doi.org/10.5285/34df941d-abb8-4171-9c9d-33202e5a2ea5
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The dataset provides measurements of water temperature, electrical conductivity (EC), pH and turbidity from rivers in the Peruvian Andes. Data were collected from 23 river sites in the Cordillera Vilcanota (12 sites) and Cordillera Blanca (11 sites) regions from 11/09/2019 to 18/09/2019 (Cordillera Vilcanota) from 7/05/2020 to 16/05/2020 (Cordillera Blanca). Each variable was measured once at each river site. Sites were selected along a continuum of declining glacier cover to investigate the influence of glaciers on river habitats.
Publication date: 2025-09-12
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Format
Comma-separated values (CSV)
Spatial information
Study area
Spatial representation type
Raster
Spatial reference system
WGS 84
Spatial resolution
10 metres
Temporal information
Temporal extent
2019-09-11 to 2020-05-16
Provenance & quality
At each site, measurements of water temperature, electrical conductivity (EC) and pH were taken in Vilcanota using a Hach (Loveland, CO, USA) HQ40D probe, and in Blanca a Xylem (Washington D.C., USA) Multi 3630 multiparameter probe was used. Turbidity was measured with a Cole-Parmer (Vernon Hills, IL, USA) Oakton T-100 turbidity probe. Channel stability was determined using the “channel bottom” component of the Pfankuch Index (Pfankuch, 1975), and then calculating the inverse of this score so that higher scores represented more stable river beds. Water samples were collected by filtering 100 mL of river water through a 0.45 micron filter to determine total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) (Skalar (Breda, Netherlands) San++ automatic wet chemistry analyser) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) (Analytik Jena (Jena, Germany) Multi NC2100 micro elemental analyser). Within each region, all measurements were collected by the same person. Pfankuch Index was calculated by the same person to ensure consistency in qualitative analysis.
Licensing and constraints
This dataset will be available under the terms of the Open Government Licence 
Cite this dataset as:
Kerr, N.R.; Quincey, D.; Fell, S.C.; Medina, K.; Loarte, E.; Brown, L.E. (2025). Physical and environmental measurements from river sites in the Cordillera Vilcanota and Cordillera Blanca ranges of the Peruvian Andes, 2019-2020. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/34df941d-abb8-4171-9c9d-33202e5a2ea5
Related
Correspondence/contact details
Other contacts
Publisher
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre
info@eidc.ac.uk
Rights holder
University of Leeds