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Machine-learning model predictions and groundwater-quality rasters of chloride in aquifers of the Mississippi Embayment

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

Groundwater is a vital resource in the Mississippi embayment of the central United States. An innovative approach using machine learning (ML) was employed to predict groundwater salinity—including specific conductance (SC), total dissolved solids (TDS), and chloride (Cl) concentrations—across three drinking-water aquifers of the Mississippi embayment. A ML approach was used because it accommodates a large and diverse set of explanatory variables, does not assume monotonic relations between predictors and response data, and results can be extrapolated to areas of the aquifer not sampled. These aspects of ML allowed potential drivers and sources of high salinity water that have been hypothesized in other studies to be included as explanatory variables. The ML approach integrated output from a groundwater-flow model and water-quality data to predict salinity, and the approach can be applied to other aquifers to provide context for the long-term availability of groundwater resources. The Mississippi embayment includes two principal regional aquifer systems; the surficial aquifer system, dominated by the Quaternary Mississippi River Valley Alluvial aquifer (MRVA), and the Mississippi embayment aquifer system, which includes deeper Tertiary aquifers and confining units. Based on the distribution of groundwater use for drinking water, the modeling focused on the MRVA, middle Claiborne aquifer (MCAQ), and lower Claiborne aquifer (LCAQ). Boosted regression tree (BRT) models (Elith and others, 2008; Kuhn and Johnson, 2013) were developed to predict SC and Cl to 1-kilometer (km) raster grid cells of the National Hydrologic Grid (Clark and others, 2018) for 7 aquifer layers (1 MRVA, 4 MCAQ, 2 LCAQ) following the hydrogeologic framework of Hart and others (2008). TDS maps were created using the correlation between SC and TDS. Explanatory variables for the BRT models included attributes associated with well location and construction, surficial variables (such as soils and land use), and variables extracted from a MODFLOW groundwater flow model for the Mississippi embayment (Haugh and others, 2020a; Haugh and others, 2020b). Prediction intervals were calculated for SC and Cl by bootstrapping raster-cell predictions following methods from Ransom and others (2017). For a full description of modeling workflow and final model selection see Knierim and others (2020).

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
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/f75c78bbac8af1f41a26dad15aa5d0a3
Identifier USGS:5df7eedbe4b0cdded7393f94
Data Last Modified 20200821
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
Harvest Object Id 398f1752-c39e-4f75-a169-b3098605a41f
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -94.1084,31.1998,-86.76,37.4605
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash e8e05004cf2e058fd2da3b013f2b087f5aef2ba03c77364b85cb84c3c4aa0a07
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -94.1084, 31.1998, -94.1084, 37.4605, -86.76, 37.4605, -86.76, 31.1998, -94.1084, 31.1998}

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