Tables of U- and Th-isotopic data used to calculate uranium-series age estimates and initial 234U/238U activity ratios as well as 87Sr/86Sr, δ13C, and δ18O for samples of phreatic speleothems from Wind Cave National Park and U- and Sr-isotopic compositions of waters from the southern Black Hills of South Dakota, USA

The U.S. Geological Survey, in collaboration with the Department of Energy, University of Montana, Northern Arapaho Tribe, and Liverpool John Moores University, is studying the interaction of a contaminated groundwater plume enriched in uranium and other trace elements with water, sediment, and biota along a 3 km reach of the Little Wind River in central Wyoming. The source of the contaminants is from a reclaimed uranium mill site near Riverton, Wyoming. This Data Release makes available data collected from June to September, 2016 and August to September, 2017. Data collected during these time periods include: (1) radon, major-ion, and trace-element concentrations in surface-water, groundwater, and pore-water samples; (2) environmental tracers in groundwater and surface-water samples; (3) seepage rates of shallow groundwater into the Little Wind River; (4) streambed temperature; (5) distribution of uranium in bed sediment, macroalgae, and aquatic insect taxa; (6) river discharge at three sites along the study reach, (7) major-ion and trace-element concentrations in shallow sediment cores collected from the streambed; (8) periphyton biomass accrual on ceramic plates during a 2-week deployment period; and (9) uranium and molybdenum concentration in periphyton samples collected from sites within the study reach.

This spatial data set provides information pertaining to the known land use and disturbance history for lands within the March 2018 administrative boundary of Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota. Land use and disturbance history presented here are not a comprehensive record of all potential land uses and disturbances but rather a record of known and documented land uses and disturbances based on the best available information. Additional land use and disturbance information may exist but due to time and budget constraints may not have been discovered during the research and development of this data set. The information in this data set was gathered through a variety of sources including but not limited to communication with National Park Service staff, historical documents, land patent records, online information searches, aerial imagery, historical photographs, and spatial data repositories. Data are presented as polygon features, each with a unique area number, its total area (in acres) and the percent of the park the area covers. Polygons were delineated based on existing GIS layers in park records, or, when these were not available, they were digitized using ESRI Arc Map 10.5.1 in conjunction with USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service NAIP orthoimagery based on written descriptions of locations (e.g., Township and Range Survey System) or maps in information sources. History of each polygon is described for one or more of five land use or disturbance types: cultivation, structures, excavation, grazing, and other disturbance. Each land use or disturbance type has six attribute fields. The first field indicates if there is evidence of the land use or disturbance type in the polygon. "Yes" indicates there is evidence and a value indicates evidence was not found. A value does not guarantee that the land use or disturbance type has not occurred in the area, but rather that we found no evidence of that type. The second field provides a description of the land use or disturbance event or activities. The level of detail provided in the description is based on the best available information. The third field provides the last known date of land use or disturbance or the best estimation of the last known date; for grazing, the range of time over which grazing was documented is indicated. The fourth field provides an explanation of how the land use or disturbance date was generated or the confidence level of the date. The fifth field provides an explanation of the confidence in the area boundary. The spatial accuracy of area boundaries are only as good as the available information they were generated from and should be used with the understanding that they may be overestimated, underestimated, or misaligned. In some cases the area was generated from personal recollection of a park service staff and exact location is unknown. The sixth and last field provides the references used to populate the first five fields.

The storage assessment unit (SAU) is the fundamental unit used in the National Assessment of Geologic Carbon Dioxide Storage Resources project for the assessment of geologic CO2 storage resources. The SAU is shown here as a geographic boundary interpreted, defined, and mapped by the geologist responsible for the assessment interval. Individual SAUs are defined on the basis of common geologic and hydrologic characteristics. The resource that is assessed is the mass of CO2 that can be stored in the technically accessible pore volume of a storage formation. The technically accessible storage resource is one that may be available using present-day geological and engineering knowledge and technology for CO2 injection into geologic formations and therefore is not a total in-place resource estimate. The SAU boundary is defined geologically as the limits of the geologic elements that define the SAU, such as limits of reservoir rock, geologic structures, depth, and seal lithologies. The only exceptions to this are SAUs that border the international, or Federal-State water boundary. In these cases, the international or Federal-State water boundary forms part of the SAU boundary. Drilling-density cell maps show the number of wells that have been drilled into the SAU. Each 1-square-mile cell has a count for the number of unique well boreholes drilled into the SAU. For a given sedimentary basin, the National Assessment of Geologic Carbon Dioxide Storage Resources project identifies SAUs containing the potential for storage and sequestration of carbon dioxide. Proprietary well header data from IHS ENERDEQ through 2010 were queried to determine which wells were drilled into specific SAUs. The coordinates of wells are proprietary and cannot be released; however, counts of the number of wells per square mile are presented in the well drilling density data layer.

The late Pleistocene was a climatically dynamic period, with abrupt shifts between cool-wet and warm-dry conditions. Increased effective precipitation supported large pluvial lakes and long-lived spring ecosystems in valleys and basins throughout the western and southwestern U.S., but the source and seasonality of the precipitation are debated. Here we present stable carbon and oxygen isotope data from tooth enamel of late Pleistocene herbivores recovered from paleowetland deposits at Tule Spring Fossil Beds National Monument in the Las Vegas Valley of southern Nevada, as well as modern herbivores from the surrounding area, to investigate whether winter or summer precipitation was responsible for driving the wet hydroclimate conditions that prevailed in the region during the late Pleistocene. Tooth enamel δ18O values for Equus, Bison, and Mammuthus are generally low (average 22.2±0.7‰, 2 s.e., VSMOW) compared to modern equids (26.1±1.0‰), and imply lower water δ18O values (–16.5 ±0.8‰) than what is observed in active springs and wells in the Las Vegas Valley (–12.9‰) or implied by modern equids and a local calibration of equid and water compositions (-12.2±1.1‰). Notably, Camelops generally yielded higher δ18O values (23.7±1.1‰), possibly suggesting drought tolerance. Mean δ13C values for the Pleistocene grazers (–6.4±0.8‰, 2 s.e., VPDB) are considerably higher than for modern equids (-10.4±0.4‰) and indicate more consumption of C4 grass (18±6%) than today 0±3%). However, calculated C4 grass consumption in the late Pleistocene is strikingly lower than the amount of C4 grass taxa currently present in the valley (55-60%) which is unexpected in the context of widespread C4 grassy patches. δ13C values in Camelops tooth enamel (-7.4±1.2‰) are interpreted as reflecting moderate consumption (16±9%) of Atriplex (saltbush), a C4 shrub that flourishes in regions with hot, dry summers. Lower water δ18O values, lower abundance of C4 grasses, and the inferred presence of Atriplex are all consistent with general circulation models that show the enhanced winter moisture delivered into the interior western U.S. during the late Pleistocene was sourced from the north Pacific, but do not support alternative models that infer enhanced summer precipitation was sourced from the tropics. In addition, we hypothesize that dietary competition between the diverse and abundant Pleistocene fauna may have driven the grazers analyzed here to feed preferentially on C4 grasses. Dietary partitoning, especially when combined with decreased pCO2 levels during the late Pleistocene, could readily explain the relatively high δ13C values observed in late Pleistocene grazers in the Las Vegas Valley and elsewhere in the southwestern U.S. without the input of additional summer precipitation as it has been interpreted previously. This suggests that Pleistocene hydroclimate parameters derived from floral records may need to be reevaluated in the context of the potential effects of dietary preferences and lower pCO2 levels on the stability of C3 vs. C4 plants.

This data release contains tabular data (comma-separated-value files) of natural radiogenic isotopes of strontium, uranium, and thorium for samples of modern water, speleothems, associated with Fitton Cave, north central Arkansas, as well as rock that host the cave deposits. In addition, U-series ages (230Th/U dates and model 234U/238U dates) are calculated from those data for subsamples of speleothems. Stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon are reported for a subset of the stalagmite samples. Sample locations and descriptions as well as specific sub-sample imagery and narrative explanations are included as information supporting the analyses. Selected results are depicted as data plots in an accompanying Excel spreadsheet for non-interpretive illustration.

This data release contains tabular data (comma-separated-value files) of natural radiogenic isotopes of strontium, uranium, and thorium for samples of modern water, speleothems, associated with Fitton Cave, north central Arkansas, as well as rock that host the cave deposits. In addition, U-series ages (230Th/U dates and model 234U/238U dates) are calculated from those data for subsamples of speleothems. Stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon are reported for a subset of the stalagmite samples. Sample locations and descriptions as well as specific sub-sample imagery and narrative explanations are included as information supporting the analyses. Selected results are depicted as data plots in an accompanying Excel spreadsheet for non-interpretive illustration.

This data release contains data discussed in its larger work citation. "ClimateComparisonData.csv" contains summary metrics of six climate projections used as climate input for quantitative simulations of hydrologic and ecological responses to climate change at Wind Cave National Park (WCNP) and the same summary metrics for 38 other climate projections available at the time that these simulations were done. "HydroData.csv" contains mean annual streamflow of a stream in WCNP and mean annual hydraulic head of a subterranean lake in Wind Cave as simulated by the rainfall-response aquifer and watershed flow (RRAWFLOW) model for two climate projections in the climate dataset. The remaining files contain aboveground live forest carbon, frequency of high-fire-danger days, and annual grass production as simulated by the dynamic vegetation model MC1 parameterized for WCNP for combinations of four climate projections in the climate dataset with a variety of management alternatives.

There are over 10,000 hydrothermal features in Yellowstone National Park (YNP), where waters have pH values ranging from about 1 to 10 and surface temperatures up to 95 °C. Active hydrothermal areas in YNP provide insight into a variety of processes occurring at depth, such as water-rock and oxidation-reduction (redox) reactions, the formation of alteration minerals, and microbial (thermophile) metabolism in extreme environments, and possible indications of volcanic unrest. Investigations into the water chemistry of hydrothermal features, streams, and rivers in YNP have been conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other earth-science organizations and academic institutions since 1883 (Gooch and Whitfield, 1888; Price and others, 2024). More recently, USGS researchers have sampled hydrothermal features in YNP at least annually since 1994 (McCleskey and others, 2014, and references within). In this Data Release, the chemical and isotopic analyses of 845 water samples collected beginning in 2009 are reported for numerous thermal and non-thermal features in YNP. This report combines water chemistry data presented in McCleskey and others (2014) with data collected after 2014. These water samples were collected and analyzed as part of research investigations in YNP on and as part of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory monitoring plans (Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, 2006); arsenic, iron, nitrogen, and sulfur redox species in hot springs and overflow drainages; the occurrence and distribution of dissolved mercury and arsenic; and general hydrogeochemistry of hot springs throughout YNP. For most samples, data includes water temperature, pH, specific conductance, dissolved oxygen, and concentrations of major cations, anions, trace metals, alkalinity, sulfur redox species (hydrogen sulfide and thiosulfate), nutrients, silica, boron, arsenic and iron redox species, acidity, dissolved organic carbon, and hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios. For select samples, tritium (3H), stable carbon isotopes of the dissolved inorganic carbon, and sulfur isotopes of sulfate are presented. In addition, chemical data for river, stream, and lake waters were obtained to determine input of different solutes from thermal areas throughout YNP. References Cited Gooch, F.A., and Whitfield, J.E., 1888, Analyses of waters of the Yellowstone National Park with an account of the methods of analysis employed: Bulletin 47, p. 84. McCleskey, R.B., Chiu, R.B., Nordstrom, D.K., Campbell, K.M., Roth, D.A., Ball, J.W., and Plowman, T.I., 2014, Water-Chemistry Data for Selected Springs, Geysers, and Streams in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Beginning 2009: doi:10.5066/F7M043FS. Price, M.B., McCleskey, R.B., Oaks, A., Hurwitz, S., and Nordstrom, D.K., 2024, Historic Water Chemistry Data for Thermal Features, Streams, and Rivers in the Yellowstone National Park Area, 1883-2021: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9KSEVI1. Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, 2006, Volcano and earthquake monitoring plan for the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, 2006-2015: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2006-5276, http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2006/5276/. First posted - September 19, 2022 (available from author) Revised - March 4, 2025 (version 2.0) NOTE: While previous versions are available from the author, all the records in previous versions can be found in version 2.0.

This data release contains six zipped raster files of thermal infrared (TIR) images of the South Loup River, North Loup River, and Dismal River named as LowerSouthLoup_AerialTIRImage_1m_2015.zip, MiddleSouthLoup_AerialTIRImage_50cm_2015.zip, UpperSouthLoup_AerialTIRImage_30cm_2015.zip, LowerDismal_AerialTIRImage_1m_2016.zip, UpperDismal_AerialTIRImage_50cm_2015.zip, and NorthLoup_AerialTIRImage_1m_2016.zip. This data release also includes a Reconn_Temperature_Gradient_X_sections.zip file which contains three ASCII comma separated values files with stream reconnaissance data which include stream temperature, streambed temperature, and vertical hydraulic gradient. This dataset also includes a Focused_discharge_points.zip file which contains five point shapefiles of interpreted focused groundwater discharge (groundwater discharge as springs) locations along the South Loup, North Fork of the South Loup, North Loup, and Dismal Rivers in Nebraska. The last file included in this data release is Centerline.zip which contains one line shapefile of the stream reach centerlines. Further information about each of these datasets can be found in their associated metadata files.