ABSTRACT:

This repository contains the code and data needed to reproduce the findings in the homonimous research paper "A Century of Water Quality Sampling in Rivers of the United States" to be published in Communications Earth and Environment (https://www.nature.com/commsenv/).

The repository has a simple structure with two folders: 1Code and 2Data. The first folder contains five .R files that follow the exact same order of the sections and figures in the paper. The code in each of these files is commented with great detail, so that all main and supplementary figures are explicitly mentioned in the code, as well as the files and data sources needed to run the code. The second folder contains all files needed to reproduce the figures, except for the two largest datasets which can be downloaded directly from their source, as also mentioned in the code.

These two additional sources are 1) The National Hydrography Dataset High Resolution (NHD-HR), downloadable through https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/access-national-hydrography-products, and 2) The ChemLotUS dataset, downloadable through a HydroShare repository (https://doi.org/10.4211/hs.9b2b865acc51481babc74599470a3bfc) and comprehensively described in the corresponding paper published in Water Resources Research (https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR039355)

ABSTRACT:

ChemLotUS contains water quality information in rivers and streams carefully curated and linked to a high resolution stream network. The dataset covers the contiguous United States (CONUS) with nearly 35 million records in about 290,000 sites. 11 water constituents are included so far: Calcium (Ca), Electrical Conductivity (EC), pH, Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Turbidity (Tu), Total Organic Carbon (TOC), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Chlorophyll a (Chl-a), Nitrate (NO3), Soluble Reactive P (SRP), and Total P (TP). Raw water quality data comes from the Water Quality Portal (WQP - https://www.waterqualitydata.us/), and network information comes from the National Hydrography Dataset High Resolution (NHD-HR - https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/nhdplus-high-resolution).

The repository contains the ChemLotUS dataset, as well as the code developed to obtain it, following the structure described on the Readme1 file.
The Readme2 file contains the definitions of the columns contained in each of the csv files comprised in the dataset.

This version is preferred over the two previous ones, considering the following differences:

1. With DOI: 10.4211/hs.595e2ba483524feba22273e4dfbed190 (Apr 10, 2025): During a workshop conducted in May 5 - 9, 2025 at UF using this previous version, we identified potential outliers not identified as such in the csv files. The new version solves this issue.
2. With DOI: 10.4211/hs.266099a29929423e9cec8bdb886b6a21 (Aug 26, 2024): Noting that this is the version originally submitted to peer review, the subsequent versions follow the recommendations made by the reviewers.

More details about the ChemLotUS dataset, including the methods employed to obtain it and several example use cases, are presented in the homonymous paper "ChemLotUS: A Benchmark Dataset of Lotic Chemistry across US River Networks", published on May 2025 in Water Resources Research (https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR039355).

ABSTRACT:

ChemLotUS contains water quality information in rivers and streams carefully curated and linked to a high resolution stream network. The dataset covers the contiguous United States (CONUS) with nearly 35 million records in about 290,000 sites. 11 water constituents are included so far: Calcium (Ca), Electrical Conductivity (EC), pH, Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Turbidity (Tu), Total Organic Carbon (TOC), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Chlorophyll a (Chl-a), Nitrate (NO3), Soluble Reactive P (SRP), and Total P (TP). Raw water quality data comes from the Water Quality Portal (WQP - https://www.waterqualitydata.us/), and network information comes from the National Hydrography Dataset High Resolution (NHD-HR - https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/nhdplus-high-resolution).

This repository contains the data, as well as the code developed to obtain it, according to the Readme1 file.
The Readme2 file contains the definitions of the columns contained in each csv.

The difference with the previous version of this repository is that we followed recommendations by the reviewers of the associated paper. Therefore, this version is recommended over the previous one.

More details about the dataset are explained in the research paper with the same name "ChemLotUS: A Benchmark Dataset of Lotic Chemistry across US River Networks", of which the first revision was reurned to peer review after following reviewer's recommendations.

ABSTRACT:

ChemLotUS contains water quality information in rivers and streams carefully curated and linked to a high resolution stream network. The dataset covers the contiguous United States (CONUS) with nearly 35 million records in about 290,000 sites. 11 water constituents are included so far: Calcium (Ca), Electrical Conductivity (EC), pH, Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Turbidity (Tu), Total Organic Carbon (TOC), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Chlorophyll a (Chl-a), Nitrate (NO3), Soluble Reactive P (SRP), and Total P (TP). Raw water quality data comes from the Water Quality Portal (WQP - https://www.waterqualitydata.us/), and network information comes from the National Hydrography Dataset High Resolution (NHD-HR - https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/nhdplus-high-resolution).

This repository contains the data, as well as the code developed to obtain it, according to the readme file.

More details about the dataset are explained in the research paper with the same name "ChemLotUS: A Benchmark Dataset of Lotic Chemistry across US River Networks", currently submitted to peer review