In 2013, the first of several Regional Stream Quality Assessments (RSQA) was done in the Midwest United States. The Midwest Stream Quality Assessment (MSQA) was a collaborative study by the U.S. Geological Survey National Water Quality Assessment and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Rivers and Streams Assessment. One of the objectives of the RSQA, and thus the MSQA, is to characterize relations between stream ecology and water-quality stressors to determine the relative effects of these stressors on aquatic biota in streams. Data required to meet this objective included fish species and abundance data and physical and chemical water-quality characteristics of the ecological reaches of the sites that were sampled. This dataset comprises 135 fish species, 39,920 fish, 10 selected water-quality stressor metrics, and six selected fish community stressor response variables for 98 sites sampled for the MSQA.

In 2013, the Regional Stream Quality Assessment (RSQA) study was started as part of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) project. One of the objectives of the RSQA is to characterize the relationships between water-quality stressors and stream ecology and subsequently determine the relative effects of these stressors on aquatic biota within the streams (Garrett and others, 2017; Journey and others, 2015; Coles and others, 2019; Sheibley and others, 2017; May and others, 2020). The study was implemented in five regions across the United States (U.S.); the Midwest (MSQA) in 2013, the Southeast (SESQA) in 2014, the Pacific Northwest (PNSQA) in 2015, the Northeast (NESQA) in 2016, and California (CSQA) in 2017. To meet this objective, a framework of fundamental geospatial data was required to develop physical and anthropogenic characteristics of each study region, sampled sites, and corresponding watersheds and riparian zones. This dataset repres ...

In 2013, the Regional Stream Quality Assessment (RSQA) study was started as part of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) project. One of the objectives of the RSQA is to characterize the relationships between water-quality stressors and stream ecology and subsequently determine the relative effects of these stressors on aquatic biota within the streams (Garrett and others, 2017; Journey and others, 2015; Coles and others, 2019; Sheibley and others, 2017; May and others, 2020). The study was implemented in five regions across the United States (U.S.); the Midwest (MSQA) in 2013, the Southeast (SESQA) in 2014, the Pacific Northwest (PNSQA) in 2015, the Northeast (NESQA) in 2016, and California (CSQA) in 2017. To meet this objective, a framework of fundamental geospatial data was required to develop physical and anthropogenic characteristics of each study region, sampled sites, and corresponding watersheds and riparian zones. This dataset represents the _location of the 483 water-quality sampling sites within the five regional study areas sampled for the RSQA and is one of the four fundamental geospatial data layers that were developed for the regional study.

This data release includes metrics from the Regional Stream Quality Assessment (RSQA) from the Southeast Region for habitat stressors related to water-quality and habitat substrate. The goals of RSQA are to characterize multiple water-quality factors that are stressors to aquatic life ‐ contaminants, nutrients, sediment, and streamflow alteration – and to develop a better understanding of the relation of these stressors to ecological conditions in streams throughout the region. In order to characterize water-quality variables and stream-habitat measurements as an aggregation of multiple measurements over a sampling period, and in support of ecological stressor modelling, metrics (summary statistics or indices) were computed from individual results by site using consistent methods over a consistent time frame. Water-quality metrics are based on discrete samples as well as long-term deployed passive samplers.

In 2013, the first of several Regional Stream Quality Assessments (RSQA) was done in the Midwest United States. The Midwest Stream Quality Assessment (MSQA) was a collaborative study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA), the USGS Columbia Environmental Research Center, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) National Rivers and Streams Assessment (NRSA). One of the objectives of the RSQA, and thus the MSQA, is to characterize the relationships between water-quality stressors and stream ecology and to determine the relative effects of these stressors on aquatic biota within the streams (U.S. Geological Survey, 2012). To meet this objective, a framework of fundamental geospatial data was required to develop physical and anthropogenic characteristics of the study region, sampled sites and corresponding watersheds, and riparian zones. The riparian-zone boundaries were created from stream centerlines digitized from imagery (hereinafter the "digitized riparian reach") that were buffered by 50 meters on each side of the stream centerline. The length of the digitized riparian reach was calculated as the distance in kilometers equal to the base-10 logarithm of the geospatially-derived watershed area, in kilometers squared (Johnson and Zelt, 2005). This dataset represents the riparian zones in the MSQA, and is one of the four fundamental geospatial data layers that were developed for the Midwest study.

In 2015, the second of several Regional Stream Quality Assessments (RSQA) was done in the southeastern United States. The Southeast Stream Quality Assessment (SESQA) was a study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) project. One of the objectives of the RSQA, and thus the SESQA, is to characterize the relationships between water-quality stressors and stream ecology and subsequently determine the relative effects of these stressors on aquatic biota within the streams (Van Metre and Journey, 2014). To meet this objective, a framework of fundamental geospatial data was required to develop physical and anthropogenic characteristics of the study region, sampled sites and corresponding watersheds, and riparian zones. This dataset represents the 115 water-chemistry sites sampled for the SESQA, and is one of the four fundamental geospatial data layers that were developed for the Southeast study.

In 2013, the Regional Stream Quality Assessment (RSQA) study was started as part of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) project. One of the objectives of the RSQA is to characterize the relationships between water-quality stressors and stream ecology and subsequently determine the relative effects of these stressors on aquatic biota within the streams (Garrett and others, 2017; Journey and others, 2015; Coles and others, 2019; Sheibley and others, 2017; May and others, 2020). The study was implemented in five regions across the United States (U.S.); the Midwest (MSQA) in 2013, the southeast (SESQA) in 2014, the Pacific Northwest (PNSQA) in 2015, the northeast (NESQA) in 2016, and California (CSQA) in 2017. To meet this objective (correlations with and effects of stressors), a framework of fundamental geospatial data was required to develop physical and anthropogenic characteristics of each study region for the watersheds and riparian zones associated with each sampling location. This dataset includes 150 selected environmental characteristics for the 483 sites sampled across all regions of the study. The characteristics were derived over the five years (2013 to 2017) using geospatial summary techniques where spatial information is summarized based on spatial extents such as watersheds. The characteristics were developed using the geospatial data for the location of the water-quality sites, delineations of areas draining to the sites (watershed boundaries, including the boundaries of the lower 5 kilometers [km] of watershed [Lower Basin] for the NESQA and CSQA study regions), and riparian-zone boundaries defined from buffers along digitized riparian reaches (Qi and Nakagaki, 2020). This dataset consists of 3 tables: 1) the main data file containing the environmental characteristics of sites, watersheds (including the boundaries of the lower 5 km of watershed for the NESQA and CSQA study regions), and riparian zones, 2) the data dictionary that describes the variables in the data file, and 3) the full citations associated with the references cited in the data dictionary.

Dissolved pesticides were measured in weekly water samples from 85 wadeable streams in Central Coastal California over a variable six-week period during March–May, 2017, as part of the California Stream Quality Assessment (CSQA) study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Regional Stream-Quality Assessment (RSQA) Project. The 85 streams consisted of 40 urban sites (5–100% urban land in the lower basin), 9 agricultural sites, 24 mixed land-use sites, and 12 undeveloped sites. Water samples were filtered (0.7 micrometers) and analyzed for 253 pesticide compounds by direct-injection liquid chromatography with tandem mass-spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Two similar LC-MS/MS methods were used: a broad-spectrum (223 compounds) method in use since 2012 and a newly developed method for 30 new-generation fungicides and diamide and neonicotinoid insecticides. This Data Release provides sampling-site locations, analyte information, concentration data for pesticide compounds in environmen ...

These data present the results of sediment toxicity tests conducted by the US Geological Survey's Columbia Environmental Research Center (CERC) in Columbia, MO, in 2014. The sediments were collected as one part of a larger study on stream quality in Southeastern USA streams during the summer of 2014. For more information on the larger study see- https://webapps.usgs.gov/rsqa. The data include results from two test species, the amphipod Hyalella azteca and the midge Chironomus dilutus (formerly known as C. tentans). Three endpoints per species tested are listed as survival, growth and biomass from 76 freshwater stream sediments collected in the study. Values listed are the average response across four test replicates per species, per sediment tested, and are listed as both absolute values per test endpoint and as values normalized to organism performance in reference sediments included within the study. Laboratory testing methods followed standard sediment toxicity test methods fo ...

This dataset is a 30-meter resolution raster of estimated extent of subsurface tile drains, developed from tabular data of state-level estimates of agricultural land drained by tiles combined with geospatial cropland and soils in 12 Midwest States (SD, NE, KS, MN, IA, MO, WI, IL, MI, IN, OH, and KY). This dataset was created from the following four sources: 1) state-level acreages of agricultural "land drained by tiles" from the 2012 Census of Agriculture; 2) the extent of cultivated cropland from the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) 2011; 3) the extent of poorly and moderately drained soils from the State Soil Geographic Database (STATSGO) database Version 2; and 4) state administrative boundaries. The area of drained land was evenly allocated to potentially drained land for agriculture - cropland with poorly drained soil - except in Iowa. For Iowa, because the reported area of land drained by tiles exceeded the area of cropland on poorly drained soils, the additional area of subsurface tile drains greater than the area of cropland on poorly drained soils was assigned to land characterized as cropland with moderately drained soil. The estimated extent of subsurface tile drains in each cell is expressed in square meters.

This dataset includes a subset of previously released pesticide data (Morace and others, 2020) from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) Regional Stream Quality Assessment (RSQA) project and the corresponding hazard index results calculated using the R package toxEval, which are relevant to Mahler and others, 2020. Pesticide and transformation products were analyzed at the USGS National Water Quality Laboratory in Denver, Colorado. Files are grouped as pesticides (parent compounds), transformation products (degradate compounds), compounds with no Acute Invertebrate (AI) benchmarks, compounds with no Acute Non-Vascular Plant (ANVP) benchmarks, and compounds not evaluated through the toxEval R program. See Morace and others, 2020 for corresponding quality assurance or quality control data.