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. 2023 Jan 11;10(1):20.
doi: 10.1038/s41597-022-01915-0.

A 30-year dataset of CO2 in flowing freshwaters in the United States

Timothy R Toavs  1 , Caleb T Hasler  2 , Cory D Suski  3 , Stephen R Midway  4
Affiliations

A 30-year dataset of CO2 in flowing freshwaters in the United States

Timothy R Toavs et al. Sci Data. .

Abstract

Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have been linked to effects in a wide range of ecosystems and organisms, with negative effects of elevated CO2 documented for marine organisms. Less is known about the dynamics of CO2 in freshwaters, but the potential exists for freshwater organisms to be challenged by elevated CO2. In flowing freshwaters CO2 exhibits more variability than in lakes or the ocean, yet spatiotemporally extensive direct measures of CO2 in freshwater are rare. However, CO2 can be estimated from pH, temperature, and alkalinity-commonly collected water quality metrics. We used data from the National Water Quality Monitoring Council along with the program PHREEQC to estimate CO2 in flowing freshwaters across 35,000 sites spanning the lower 48 US states from 1990 through 2020. Site data for water chemistry measurements were spatially joined with the National Hydrology Dataset. Our resulting dataset, CDFLOW, presents an opportunity for researchers to add CO2 to their datasets for further investigation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Workflow for developing CDFLOW.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Spatial distribution of pCO2 estimates within CDFLOW. Panel (a) shows the total number of estimates in each Hydrological unit code-2 (HUC2) within the CONUS. Panel (b) shows the total number of estimates divided by the number of 5000-feature-km in each HUC2 within the CONUS.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Counts of pCO2 estimates by year within CDFLOW.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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