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Groundwater data and age information from samples collected in Minnesota (ver. 2.0, January 2024)

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

Groundwater age distributions and susceptibility to natural and anthropogenic contaminants were assessed for selected wells, streambed piezometers, and springs in southeastern Minnesota. The data provide information to understand how long it will take to observe groundwater quality improvements from best management practices implemented at land surface to reduce losses of nitrate (and other chemicals) from agricultural practices. Nineteen water samples were collected from ten wells, three streambed piezometers, and four springs between August 2020 and September 2022. Two of these samples are field replicate samples collected from a spring site and a well site. A child item contains historical data from 15 water samples from 10 wells between July 1996 to May 1997. Groundwater ages were estimated from dissolved gas (neon, argon, krypton, and xenon) and environmental tracer data (tritium, sulfur hexafluoride, chlorofluorocarbons, and tritiogenic helium-3) from field samples using the equations available in TracerLPM (an Excel® workbook for interpreting groundwater age distributions from environmental tracer data) and DGMETA (an Excel® workbook for dissolved gas modeling and environmental tracer analysis); groundwater age estimates are reported in Table_1_Age_Information.txt. DGMETA was used to compute the optimal water temperature, excess air, entrapped air, fractionation of gases, and excess nitrogen gas (mainly from denitrification) for the measured dissolved gases in a sample; condensed results are reported in Table_1_Age_Information.txt and these results are reported in detail in Table_2_Dissolved_Gases.txt. These values were then used to convert the raw measured concentrations of environmental tracers into a form appropriate for age dating analysis; these results are reported in Table_3_Computed_Tracer_Concentrations.txt. Calculated concentrations of environmental tracers that were used in groundwater age calculations are the dry air mixing ratio of sulfur hexafluoride or chlorofluorocarbons, and tritiogenic helium-3, which is the concentration of helium-3 from the decay of tritium. Table_4_Site_And_Background_Information.txt reports additional site information and field parameters. In addition to these four tables, two ancillary tables are included to provide more detailed information about the fields and the abbreviations used in tables 1-4. A readme file is provided that describes each table in more detail and processes to use the data in this data release to view age distributions in TracerLPM and to set up TracerLPM to run scenarios for other chemicals of interest.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
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Identifier USGS:61f3162ed34e622189b8e1ac
Data Last Modified 20240124
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
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Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -97.24,43.4998,-89.61,48.9874
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 194f5d509655408f9acb1020f40a0f4113770b5809d41aafa5b06a13aacf964b
Source Schema Version 1.1
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