← Back to DatasetsDataset

Stable Water Isotope Data for the East River Watershed, Colorado (2014-2021)

Creators: Williams K, Beutler C, Bill M, Brown W, Newman A, O'Ryan D, Versteeg R
Year: 2023
DOI: 10.15485/1668053
License: See source for details
Location: The East River (ER) is a snow‐dominated, headwater basin of the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) located in the western United States. The ER is the designated testbed of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (WFSFA). Through WFSFA, observational networks have been established to measure stream discharge and precipitation chemistry. The ER is considered representative of many snow‐dominated headwaters of the Rocky Mountains. The study domain encompasses nearly 85 square km, a 1.4‐km vertical drop in elevation (4,120 to 2,760 m) and pristine alpine, subalpine, montane, and riparian ecosystems. The ER contains high‐energy mountain streams to low‐energy meandering floodplains and is eroding primarily into the Cretaceous, carbon‐rich, marine shale of the Mancos Formation. Additional metadata on specific locations within the watershed are provided in the following related data package: Varadharajan C. et al. (2022) doi:10.15485/1660962
Temporal extent: 2014-06-27 to 2021-12-21
Bounding box: 38.880°N to 39.034°N, -107.050°W to -106.880°W
Publisher: RMBL
Tags: SFA, Streams, stable isotopes, water isotopes, precipitation, geochemical, isotope, ground water, surface water, delta2H, delta18O, CSV file formatting guidelines, File-level metadata, CATEGORICAL:NONE EARTH SCIENCE > TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE > GROUND WATER, EARTH SCIENCE > TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE > SURFACE WATER, CATEGORICAL:GCMD Isotopes, VARIABLE:NONE EARTH SCIENCE > TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE > GROUND WATER > GROUNDWATER CHEMISTRY, EARTH SCIENCE > TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE > SURFACE WATER > SURFACE WATER CHEMISTRY, Alpine & Subalpine Ecology, Forest Ecology, Invasive Species & Disturbance, Hydrology & Watersheds, Snow & Ice, Groundwater, Geology & Tectonics, Climate Change Impacts, Weather & Atmospheric Science, Mining & Mineral Resources, Archaeology & Cultural History, Field Methods & Monitoring, Gunnison Basin, Research Programs

Description

The stable water isotope data for the East River Watershed, Colorado, consists of delta2H (hydrogen) and delta18O (oxygen) values from samples collected at multiple, long-term monitoring sites including streams, groundwater wells, springs, and a precipitation collector used to establish a local meteoric water line (LMWL) for the watershed. These locations represent important and/or unique end-member locations for which stable isotope values can be diagnostic of the connection between precipitation inputs as snow and rain and riverine export. Such locations include drainages underline entirely or largely by shale bedrock, land covered dominated by conifers, aspens, or meadows, and drainages impacted by historic mining activity and the presence of naturally mineralized rock. Developing a long-term record of water isotope values from a diversity of environments is a critical component of quantifying the impacts of both climate change and discrete climate perturbations, such as drought, forest mortality, and wildfire, on water export. Such data may be combined with stream gaging stations co-located at each surface water monitoring site to relate seasonal variations in water export to their stable isotopic signature. Data for liquid water delta2H and delta18O values are reported in units of parts per thousand (per-mil; ‰). This data package contains (1) a zip file (isotope_data_2014-2021.zip) containing a total of 69 files: 68 data files of isotope data from across the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (SFA) which is reported in .csv files per location and a locations.csv (1 file) with latitude and longitude for each location; (2) a file-level metadata (flmd.csv) file that lists each file contained in the dataset with associated metadata; and (3) a data dictionary (dd.csv) file that contains terms/column_headers used throughout the files along with a definition, units, and data type. There are a total of 34 locations containing isotope data. Update on 6/10/2022: versioned updates to this dataset was made along with these changes: (1) updated isotope data for all locations up to 2021-12-31 and (2) the addition of the file-level metadata (flmd.csv) and data dictionary (dd.csv) were added to comply with the File-Level Metadata Reporting Format. Update on 2022-09-09: Updates were made to reporting format specific files (file-level metadata and data dictionary) to correct swapped file names, add additional details on metadata descriptions on both files, add a header_row column to enable parsing, and add version number and date to file names (v2_20220909_flmd.csv and v2_20220909_dd.csv).

Local Knowledge Graph (7 entities)

Loading graph...