A comprehensive study to evaluate water-quality trends in the International Souris River Basin, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada and North Dakota, United States was completed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the International Joint Commission and International Souris River Board. This page contains water-quality data for stream and reservoir sites in the Souris River Basin in North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Each file contains information on major ions (MI), nutrients (NUT), trace metals (TM), sediment (SED), and dissolved oxygen (PHY). These data contain numerous columns that are described in the entity and attributes of these files. These files contain the water-quality observations for the statistical summary tables in the report cited in this data release (Nustad and Tatge, 2023).The siteinfo.table.csv file can be used to cross reference the sites with the main report (Nustad and Tatge, 2023).

Mineral resource occurrence data covering the world, most thoroughly within the U.S. This database contains the records previously provided in the Mineral Resource Data System (MRDS) of USGS and the Mineral Availability System/Mineral Industry Locator System (MAS/MILS) originated in the U.S. Bureau of Mines, which is now part of USGS. The MRDS is a large and complex relational database developed over several decades by hundreds of researchers and reporters. While database records describe mineral resources worldwide, the compilation of information was intended to cover the United States completely, and its coverage of resources in other countries is incomplete. The content of MRDS records was drawn from reports previously published or made available to USGS researchers. Some of those original source materials are no longer available. The information contained in MRDS was intended to reflect the reports used as sources and is current only as of the date of those source reports. Consequently MRDS does not reflect up-to-date changes to the operating status of mines, ownership, land status, production figures and estimates of reserves and resources, or the nature, size, and extent of workings. Information on the geological characteristics of the mineral resource are likely to remain correct, but aspects involving human activity are likely to be out of date.

This child page contains a zipped folder which contains all files necessary to run trend models and produce results published in U.S. Geological Scientific Investigations Report 2020–5079 [Nustad, R.A., and Vecchia, A.V., 2020, Water-quality trends for selected sites and constituents in the international Red River of the North Basin, Minnesota and North Dakota, United States, and Manitoba, Canada, 1970–2017: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2020–5079, 75 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20205079]. The folder contains: six files required to run the R–QWTREND trend analysis tool; a readme.txt file; an alldata.RData file; a siteinfo_appendix.txt: and a folder called "scripts". R–QWTREND is a software package for analyzing trends in stream-water quality. The package is a collection of functions written in R (R Development Core Team, 2019), an open source language and a general environment for statistical computing and graphics. The following system requirements a ...

A three-dimensional groundwater flow model was developed to characterize groundwater resources of the uppermost principal aquifers in the Williston structural basin in parts of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota in the United States and of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada as part of a detailed assessment of the groundwater availability of the area. The uppermost principal aquifers are comprised of the glacial, lower Tertiary, and Upper Cretaceous aquifer systems. The model was developed as a part of the U.S. Geological Survey Water Availability and Use Science Program's effort to conduct large-scale multidisciplinary regional studies of groundwater availability. The numerical model was used to (1) simulate hydrologic scenarios of interest to groundwater managers and to advance the understanding of groundwater budgets and components including recharge, discharge, and aquifer storage for the entire system, (2) compute historical and projected system response to natural and anthropogenic stresses, and (3) evaluate potential hydrologic monitoring programs at a scale relevant to basin-wide water-management decisions. This model was previously published by the U.S. Geological Survey in a Scientific Investigations Report (https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20175158) and the model input and output files are available in a data release (https://doi.org/10.5066/F75B01CZ). The underlying directories contain all of the input and output files for predictive simulations of groundwater response to selected scenarios for the uppermost principal aquifer systems in the Williston Basin, United States and Canada. The predictive simulations were created using base model files from a model developed by Davis and Long and documented in the U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5158 (https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20175158). Model archive files are documented and are available in an online data release (https://doi.org/10.5066/F75B01CZ). The three-dimensional groundwater-flow model was developed using the numerical modeling software, MODFLOW-NWT. For this study, the numerical groundwater-flow model was used to simulated three predictive scenarios: scenario 1 was focused on flowing artesian wells, and was used to simulate 1960‒2035 hydraulic-head changes that would result if none of the flowing artesian wells in the model area were capped or plugged during this period and other conditions remained constant; scenario 2 simulated 10-year drought for 2006‒15, with no increases in groundwater pumping after 2005; and scenario 3 was identical to scenario 2, except that it also applied the increased groundwater withdrawals necessary to fill the needs of energy-resource production for 2006‒15. A data-worth analysis for evaluation of potential hydrologic monitoring networks was also accomplished using the numerical model. This USGS data release contains all of the input and output files for the model described in the associated model documentation report (https://doi.org/10.3133/pp1841). This data release also includes MODFLOW-NWT (version 1.0.9) source code.

The USGS, in collaboration with other federal and state government agencies, industry, and academia, is conducting the National Geochemical Survey (NGS) to produce a body of geochemical data for the United States based primarily on stream sediments, analyzed using a consistent set of methods. These data will compose a complete, national-scale geochemical coverage of the US, and will enable construction of geochemical maps, refine estimates of baseline concentrations of chemical elements in the sampled media, and provide context for a wide variety of studies in the geological and environmental sciences. The goal of the NGS is to analyze at least one stream-sediment sample in every 289 km2 area by a single set of analytical methods across the entire nation, with other solid sample media substituted where necessary. The NGS incorporates geochemical data from a variety of sources, including existing analyses in USGS databases, reanalyses of samples in USGS archives, and analyses of newly collected samples. At the present time, the NGS includes data covering ~71% of the land area of the US, including samples in all 50 states. This version of the online report provides complete access to NGS data, describes the history of the project, the methodology used, and presents preliminary geochemical maps for all analyzed elements. Future editions of this and other related reports will include the results of analysis of variance studies, as well as interpretive products related to the NGS data. This database provides in digital form many geochemical analyses reported by USGS in its published literature.

This child page contains a zipped folder which contains all items necessary to run trend models and produce results published in U.S. Geological Scientific Investigations Report 2022–XXXX [Nustad, R.A., and Tatge, W.S., 2023, Comprehensive Water-Quality Trend Analysis for Selected Sites and Constituents in the International Souris River Basin, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada and North Dakota, United States, 1970-2020: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2023-XXXX, XX p.]. To run the R-QWTREND program in R, 6 files are required and each is included in this child page: prepQWdataV4.txt, runQWmodelV4.txt, plotQWtrendV4.txt, qwtrend2018v4.exe, salflibc.dll, and StartQWTrendV4.R (Vecchia and Nustad, 2020). The folder contains: three items required to run the R–QWTREND trend analysis tool; a README.txt file; a folder called "dataout"; and a folder called "scripts". The "scripts" folder contains the scripts that can be used to reproduce the results found in the USGS Scientific Investigations Report referenced above. The "dataout" folder contains folders for each site that contain .RData files with the naming convention of site_flow for streamflow data and site_qw_XXX depending upon the group of constituents MI, NUT, or TM. R–QWTREND is a software package for analyzing trends in stream-water quality. The package is a collection of functions written in R (R Development Core Team, 2019), an open source language and a general environment for statistical computing and graphics. The following system requirements are necessary for using R–QWTREND: • Windows 10 operating system • R (version 3.4 or later; 64 bit recommended) • RStudio (version 1.1.456 or later). An accompanying report (Vecchia and Nustad, 2020) serves as the formal documentation for R–QWTREND. Vecchia, A.V., and Nustad, R.A., 2020, Time-series model, statistical methods, and software documentation for R–QWTREND—An R package for analyzing trends in stream-water quality: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2020–1014, 51 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20201014 R Development Core Team, 2019, R—A language and environment for statistical computing: Vienna, Austria, R Foundation for Statistical Computing, accessed December 7, 2020, at https://www.r-project.org.

This data release encompass numerous studies examining soil properties and greenhouse gas fluxes of Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) wetland catchments. The PPR is one of the largest wetland ecosystems in the world, encompassing approximately 770,000 square kilometers of the north-central U.S. and south-central Canada, with the U.S. portion including parts of Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana. The data included in this release span a 19-year period (1997–2016) and represent a diversity of studies ranging from localized (e.g., wetland catchments and complexes) to region-wide efforts that span the PPR’s climate and land-use gradient. Data from individual wetland catchments encompass a variety of wetland classes ranging from small, ephemerally-ponded wetlands to large, shallow lakes. Although study designs and methodologies differ slightly among the studies, the overarching methods are comparable and allow the data to be combined into a single data release. The data release consists of combined datasets (i.e., all studies) for soils, greenhouse gases, topography, water chemistry, weather, and covariate or explanatory variables such as water depth, soil moisture, and temperature. A majority of the studies also present data from the entire wetland catchment, with data collected from numerous landscape positions along transects spanning from the wetland center to the catchment boundary. Sample frequency among the studies ranges from a single site visit per year, to season-long, biweekly sample events across multiple years.