This data release is in support of a comprehensive study to evaluate water-quality trends in the International Souris River Basin, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada and North Dakota, United States. The effort was completed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the International Joint Commission and International Souris River Board. This data release contains all files necessary to run trend models and produce results published in U.S. Geological Scientific Investigations Report 2023-XXXX [Nustad, R.A., and Tatge, W.S., 2023, Comprehensive Water-Quality Trend Analysis for Selected Sites and Constituents in the International Souris River Basin, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada and North Dakota, United States, 1970-2020: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2023-XXXX]. In addition, this data release contains data for reservoir and Canadian streamflow, and water-quality by group (MI = major ion and dissolved solids, NUT = nutrients, PHY = physical parameters) contained in comma separated values (csv) files (site_flow and country/province_data) for selected sites used in trend and spatial analysis of the Souris River Basin. Streamflow data for the selected United States sites were gathered from the National Water Information System (https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis). Water-quality data for the selected sites in the United States were gathered from the National Water Quality Monitoring Council Water Quality Portal (https://www.waterqualitydata.us/) and collected by two additional agencies; the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Geological Survey Dakota Water Science Center. For additional information see metadata file specific to each dataset.

A comprehensive study to evaluate water-quality trends in the International Souris River Basin, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada and North Dakota, United States was completed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the International Joint Commission and International Souris River Board. This child page contains seven csv files, site_flow, which contain daily streamflow values for each site. Each file includes a station identifier, date of observation, measured value of streamflow and qualifier code for the measured value. The format of the csv file (date format and column headings) is designed to meet the specific requirements of file format for R-QWTREND. If csv files are opened directly in excel, the format of the data can change. To ensure the data are in the proper format for R-QWTREND, files should be opened in a text editor. The "site" in site_flow can be cross-referenced to the main report by navigating to the file siteinfo.table.csv.

As part of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Water-Quality Assessment Program, an investigation of the Yellowstone River Basin study unit is being conducted to document status and trends in surface- and ground-water quality. Surface-water samples are collected from streams or lakes at specific sampling stations. Efficient quantification of the site-specific geographic and environmental characteristics at sampling stations requires a geospatial data set composed of the site locations that may be processed, together with other digital thematic maps (such as geology or land use), in a geographic information system (GIS). Digital data for 24 stream-sampling stations in the Yellowstone River Basin are included in this data release. The station locations were retrieved from the U.S. Geological Survey's National Water Information System where they are stored as latitude-longitude coordinate pairs referenced to the NAD27 datum. Selected station identifiers and geographic codes also were retrieved and are included in the data release.

The surface water water-quality data were compiled from Water Quality Portal (https://www.waterqualitydata.us/) (National Water Quality Monitoring Council, 2015), USGS’s NAWQA Project’s data compilation (Oelsner and others, 2017) or the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology (Montana Bureau of Mines, 2021), The compilation contains data for chloride, pH, specific conductance, sulfate, total dissolved solids (TDS) collected between water year 1970 to 2014. In addition 10 metals (aluminum, arsenic, barium, chromium, copper, iron, lead, selenium strontium, and zinc) analyzed during water years 1993 through 2014.

Summary of statistics, regression analyses, LOADEST regressions, mean annual flow-weighted concentrations/values, and Kendal tau trend analyses of flow-weighted constituent concentrations of dissolved chloride, suspended sediment, dissolved oxygen, pH, and Temperature values of water samples collected intermittently at USGS streamgages on the Canadian River or its tributaries from northeastern New Mexico, to Lake Eufaula in Oklahoma from 1949-2013. Water-quality data were retrieved from the USGS NWIS system in 2014.