Salinity yield modeling spatial data for the Upper Colorado River Basin, USA

These data (vector and raster) were compiled for spatial modeling of salinity yield sources in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) and describe different scales of watersheds in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) for use in salinity yield modeling. Salinity yield refers to how much dissolved salts are picked up in surface waters that could be expected to be measured at the watershed outlet point annually. The vector polygons are small catchments developed originally for use in SPARROW modeling that break up the UCRB into 10,789 catchments linked together through a synthetic stream network. The catchments were used for a machine learning based salinity model and attributed with the new results in these vector GIS datasets. Although all of these feature classes include the same polygons, the attribute tables for each include differing outputs from new salinity models and a comparison with SPARROW model results from previous research. The new model presented in these datasets utilizes new predictive soil maps and a more flexible random forest function to improve on previous UCRB salinity spatial models. The raster data layers represent aspects of soils, topography, climate, and runoff characteristics that have hypothesized influences on salinity yields.