Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Metal concentrations in seston and water in the Clark Fork River, MT

Metadata Updated: November 20, 2025

Legacy mine waste from the Clark Fork River in Western Montana has contributed 100 million tons of tailings into the watershed between 1880 and 1982 (E.D. Andrews, Longitudinal dispersion of metals in the Clark Fork River, Montana, Lewis Publishers, 1987). Tailings deposited along the floodplain, streambanks and river channel continue to contribute metal contaminated material into the river in the form of metal-enriched particulate matter or seston, comprising a mixture of organic and inorganic materials (J.N. Moore and S.N. Luoma, Hazardous wastes from large-scale metal extraction: A case study. Environmental Science and Technology, v.24:1278-1285, 1990). Metal enriched seston poses a dietary exposure risk to filter-feeding macroinvertebrates that entrap and ingest suspended materials as a primary food source. Suspended particulate material and dissolved and total recoverable water samples were collected along a metal contamination gradient in 2017 and 2018 in the Clark Fork River and analyzed for metal concentrations to include the highly toxic metals arsenic, cadmium, and copper. Concentrations of seston arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), and copper (Cu) ranged from 20.7–242 ug As/g, 2.7–16.2 ug Cd/g, and 129–1260 ug Cu/g. Dissolved (filtered) stream water concentrations ranged from 3.5–21.7 ug As/L, 0.1–0.38 ug Cd/L, and 1.5–12.5 ug Cu/L. Total recoverable (unfiltered) water concentrations ranged from 2.7–22.8 ug As/L, 0.1–0.35 ug Cd/L, and 2.0–14.9 ug Cu/L. Data presented here represent metal concentrations in water and seston from a mining-impacted river and provide insight to potential exposure of toxic metals to resident filter-feeding aquatic invertebrates.

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.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 20, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 20, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-61f05417d34e8b818adc32d5
Data Last Modified 2022-05-26T00:00:00Z
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://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-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 d49bf0db-b816-4765-9844-33ecceaef033
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 6e1a3ab02a693afcbe5b48b85b922d2971eab7bba4067d33d91163ff5c62aec2
Source Schema Version 1.1

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.