Work Description

Title: A database of in situ surface and subsurface water temperatures for large inland lakes across the coterminous United States Open Access Deposited

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Attribute Value
Methodology
  • The data presented here is aggregated using a variety of different methods, ranging from scraping existing online databases to collaborating with local water monitoring committees. The existing databases used were the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Water Information System (NWIS) provided by the United States Geologial Survey (USGS), and the Water Quality Portal (WQP), a cooperative service maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In addition to the data gathered from these existing water quality data sets, this database also includes lake temperature data from a variety of local sources that do not yet appear in the aforementioned online databases.
Description
  • Inland lakes play a critical role in ecosystem stability, and robust validation of lake models is essential for understanding their dynamics. While remote sensing data can assist with lake surface temperature validation, in situ data typically provides more accurate, reliable data not limited to only the lake surface. However, in situ temperature data for many individual lakes, particularly in North America, is difficult for researchers to quickly access in a standardized format. This database offers a well-organized collection of in situ near-surface and subsurface temperatures from 134 sites divided among 29 large North American inland lakes collected from a variety of sources. The database includes multiple subsurface temperatures throughout the depth profile of 84 of these sites, providing comprehensive data for lake model evaluation. All lakes selected for this database are large enough (over approximately 30 km^2 to be represented by large-scale operational weather models, supporting robust lake model validation efforts on the lakes that have the greatest impact on climatology.
Creator
Depositor
  • trsoren@umich.edu
Contact information
Discipline
Funding agency
  • Other Funding Agency
Other Funding agency
  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Keyword
Date coverage
  • 2000-01-01 to 2023-01-01
Citations to related material
  • Sorensen, T., Espey, E., Kelley, J.G.W. et al. A database of in situ water temperatures for large inland lakes across the coterminous United States. Sci Data 11, 282 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03103-8
Resource type
Curation notes
  • 2024-03-11 Publication citation and additional creator names added per author's request
Last modified
  • 03/11/2024
Published
  • 08/10/2023
Language
DOI
  • https://doi.org/10.7302/7gnd-mj10
License
To Cite this Work:
Sorensen, T. R., Espey, E., Kelley, J. G. W., Kessler, J., Gronewold, A. D. (2023). A database of in situ surface and subsurface water temperatures for large inland lakes across the coterminous United States [Data set], University of Michigan - Deep Blue Data. https://doi.org/10.7302/7gnd-mj10

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Files (Count: 2; Size: 118 MB)

Thumbnailthumbnail-column Title Original Upload Last Modified File Size Access Actions
in_situ_lake_temps.zip 2023-08-09 2023-08-09 118 MB Open Access
README.txt 2023-08-09 2023-08-09 4.71 KB Open Access

--------------------- In Situ Lake Temperature Database ------------------------
------------------------ Grant Number NA21OAR4590177 ---------------------------
--------- Email Troy Sorensen with any questions at trsoren@umich.edu ----------
-------------------------- Last Updated 08/09/2023 -----------------------------

This directory contains water temperature data from a variety of in situ
sources for many large lakes across North America from 2000 through 2022.
Some lakes have multiple observing platforms at different locations, and some
platforms record temperatures at multiple depths. Some data is accessed through
files that are downloaded in this directory, while other data is accessed
via API.
This database was developed by Troy Sorensen, research assistant within the
School of Environment and Sustainability at University of Michigan.
Our project was funded through NOAAs Joint Technology Transfer Initiative. The
purpose of our research was to evaluate lake temperature representation within
NOAAs operational weather models, and this database was developed to provide
validation data for this purpose. It is being published to provide a cohesive
dataset of lake temperatures for other researchers to use for their own lake
temperature validation studies.
All code included in this database was written by Troy Sorensen on MacOS
using R version 4.2.1 and the R package dataRetrieval_2.7.11.


The organization of this directory is as follows:


raw_data/:
This directory contains the raw downloaded water temperature data in whatever
format it was originally received in. The directory is divided into
subdirectories for each lake. Note that there is not a directory in raw_data
for many of the lakes in this database; this is because many lakes data were
obtained via API using the dataRetrieval package.
The following lakes are included in raw_data:
- champlain
- flathead
- mcconaughy
- mead
- mendota
- mono
- oneida
- pontchartrain
- pyramid
- sebago
- tahoe
- washington
- winnipesaukee


final_data/:
This directory contains subdirectories for each lake in the database.
Each lake subdirectory contains the following items:
data/:
This subdirectory contains csv files with data for each water temperature
sensor on the lake. There is a unique csv file for each location and depth.
Files are named according to the convention ABCXX_YY.csv, where ABC is a
three letter code for the lake, XX is a unique 2-digit identifier for the
latitude/longitude location of the site, and YY is a 2-digit identifier for
the depth of that sensor.
Every csv follows the same format with 2 columns: a "dateTime"" column with
the date and time of the observation in UTC, and a "temp" column with the
temperature in degrees Celsius. This data is recorded at the highest
temporal resolution available for any given sensor.
lake_metadata.csv:
Each row of this file contains metadata on the sensors listed in the "data"
subdirectory. The file contains 4 columns: "name", "depth(m)", "lat", "lon".
"name" is the name of the csv file within "data" for this sensor.
"depth" is the depth of this sensor in meters.
"lat" and "lon" are the decimal coordinates of this sensor.
lake.R:
This is the R script that was used to read the raw temperature data from
raw_data/ or via API and convert it to the common csv format detailed above.
See this file to see the data source for this lake. Note that if the user
does not alter the file paths specified in the script, then each script must
be run from the base directory.
The following lakes are included in final_data with the corresponding codes:
- champlain CHA
- clear CLE
- devils DEV
- flathead FLA
- great salt GSL
- houston HOU
- lewisville LEW
- malheur MAL
- marion MAR
- mcconaughy MCC
- mead MEA
- mendota MEN
- mono MON
- okeechobee OKE
- oneida ONE
- pontchartrain PON
- pyramid PYR
- red RED
- sakakawea SAK
- sebago SEB
- seneca SEN
- tahoe TAH
- tawakoni TAW
- upper klamath UPK
- utah UTA
- walker WAL
- washington WAS
- winnebago WIN
- winnipesaukee WIP


scripts/:
This directory contains two example scripts for working with this data.
merge_metadata.R reads the lake_metadata.csv file for each lake and merges
them all into one single csv file with a column for each sensor.
Plot_all_data plots all of the data in this database in a single plot to give
an overview of the data availability and quality for each lake.

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