Data Release for: A Web-Based Tool for Assessing the Condition of Benthic Diatom Assemblages in Streams and Rivers of the Conterminous United States

Benthic diatom assemblages are known to be indicative of water quality but have yet to be widely adopted in biological assessments in the United States due to several limitations. Our goal was to address some of these limitations by developing regional multi-metric indices (MMIs) that are robust to inter-laboratory taxonomic inconsistency, adjusted for natural covariates, and sensitive to a wide range of anthropogenic stressors. We aggregated bioassessment data from two national-scale federal programs and used a data-driven analysis in which all-possible combinations of 2-7 metrics were compared for three measures of performance. The datasets in this release support the Carlisle, et al. 2022 report cited herein. The article provides full details of data aggregation, model development, and application.

Data and Resources

Field Value
accessLevel public
bureauCode {010:12}
catalog_@context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
catalog_describedBy https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
identifier USGS:61d71ea5d34ed79294004fda
metadata_type geospatial
modified 20220126
old-spatial -130.07812500000003, 23.241346102386135, -63.28125000000001, 50.51342652633956
publisher U.S. Geological Survey
publisher_hierarchy Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash 66cfd51002d86774c5351864a97ee3300f1164aa
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": [[[-130.07812500000003, 23.241346102386135], [-130.07812500000003, 50.51342652633956], [ -63.28125000000001, 50.51342652633956], [ -63.28125000000001, 23.241346102386135], [-130.07812500000003, 23.241346102386135]]]}
theme {geospatial}
Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • algae
  • amerigeo
  • amerigeoss
  • biota
  • ckan
  • diatom
  • geo
  • geoss
  • health
  • national
  • north-america
  • river
  • stream
  • united-states
  • usgs-61d71ea5d34ed79294004fda
isopen False
license_id notspecified
license_title License not specified
maintainer Daren M Carlisle
maintainer_email dcarlisle@usgs.gov
metadata_created 2025-11-20T22:32:30.747499
metadata_modified 2025-11-20T22:32:30.747503
notes Benthic diatom assemblages are known to be indicative of water quality but have yet to be widely adopted in biological assessments in the United States due to several limitations. Our goal was to address some of these limitations by developing regional multi-metric indices (MMIs) that are robust to inter-laboratory taxonomic inconsistency, adjusted for natural covariates, and sensitive to a wide range of anthropogenic stressors. We aggregated bioassessment data from two national-scale federal programs and used a data-driven analysis in which all-possible combinations of 2-7 metrics were compared for three measures of performance. The datasets in this release support the Carlisle, et al. 2022 report cited herein. The article provides full details of data aggregation, model development, and application.
num_resources 2
num_tags 15
title Data Release for: A Web-Based Tool for Assessing the Condition of Benthic Diatom Assemblages in Streams and Rivers of the Conterminous United States