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The Upper Clark Fork River (UCFR) Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) umbrella monitoring project generating these data is conducted separately and complementarily to the 200-million-dollar (USD) superfund project for ecological restoration of the UCFR, associated tributaries, and head water streams including Silver Bow and Warm Springs Creeks. Restoration along the UCFR in western Montana includes removal of metal-laden floodplain soils, lowering of the floodplain to its original elevation, and re-vegetation of over 70 km of the river’s floodplain closest to contaminant sources. The UCFR LTREB project includes bi-weekly water quality monitoring across the first 200 km of the river and its major tributaries along a gradient of heavy metal contamination associated with historic mining. Monitoring includes inorganic phosphorus and nitrogen concentrations, biotic standing stocks, and dissolved and whole-water heavy metal concentrations. The monitoring program began in 2017 with funding extended through 2028. The original analytical intent for these data was to assess the response of river dissolved organic carbon to the floodplain restoration. Data are primarily Aurora Total Organic Carbon combustion analyses of the concentration of organic carbon dissolved in filtered samples of well-mixed river thalweg water. A few samples from the final campaign in the dataset were analyzed with a Shimadzu instrument using a similar method. Data are from the 2022 water year (1 Oct 2021 to 30 Sep 2022) from samples collected on the Upper Clark Fork River (USGS HUC 17010201) at project sites distributed along the river from the vicinity of Anaconda to Missoula, Montana, USA.
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Concentration of dissolved organic carbon in water samples taken from the Upper Clark Fork River (Montana, USA) during water year 2021 (1 Oct 2020 - 30 Sep 2021)
The Upper Clark Fork River (UCFR) Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) umbrella monitoring project generating these data is conducted separately and complementarily to the 200-million-dollar (USD) superfund project for ecological restoration of the UCFR, associated tributaries, and head water streams including Silver Bow and Warm Springs Creeks. Restoration along the UCFR in western Montana includes removal of metal-laden floodplain soils, lowering of the floodplain to its original elevation, and re-vegetation of over 70 km of the river’s floodplain closest to contaminant sources. The UCFR LTREB project includes bi-weekly water quality monitoring across the first 200 km of the river and its major tributaries along a gradient of heavy metal contamination associated with historic mining. Monitoring includes inorganic phosphorus and nitrogen concentrations, biotic standing stocks, and dissolved and whole-water heavy metal concentrations. The monitoring program began in 2017 with funding extended through 2028. The original analytical intent for these data was to assess the response of river dissolved organic carbon to the floodplain restoration. Data are Aurora Total Organic Carbon combustion analyses of the concentration of organic carbon dissolved in filtered samples of well-mixed river thalweg water. Data are from the 2021 water year (1 Oct 2020 to 30 Sep 2021) from samples collected on the Upper Clark Fork River (USGS HUC 17010201) at project sites distributed along the river from the vicinity of Anaconda to Missoula, Montana, USA.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2324877
- PAR ID:
- 10636609
- Publisher / Repository:
- Environmental Data Initiative
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The Upper Clark Fork River (UCFR) Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) umbrella monitoring project generating these data is conducted separately and complementarily to the 200-million-dollar (USD) superfund project for ecological restoration of the UCFR, associated tributaries, and head water streams including Silver Bow and Warm Springs Creeks. Restoration along the UCFR in western Montana includes removal of metal-laden floodplain soils, lowering of the floodplain to its original elevation, and re-vegetation of over 70 km of the river’s floodplain closest to contaminant sources. The UCFR LTREB project includes bi-weekly water quality monitoring across the first 200 km of the river and its major tributaries along a gradient of heavy metal contamination associated with historic mining. Monitoring includes inorganic phosphorus and nitrogen concentrations, biotic standing stocks, and dissolved and whole-water heavy metal concentrations. The monitoring program began in 2017 with funding extended through 2028. The original analytical intent for these data was to assess the response of river dissolved organic carbon to the floodplain restoration. Data are total organic carbon combustion analyses (Shimadzu Scientific Instruments) of the concentration of organic carbon dissolved in filtered samples of well-mixed river thalweg water. Data are from the 2023 water year (1 Oct 2022 to 30 Sep 2023) from samples collected on the Upper Clark Fork River (USGS HUC 17010201) at project sites distributed along the river from the vicinity of Anaconda to Missoula, Montana, USA.more » « less
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The Upper Clark Fork River (UCFR) Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) umbrella monitoring project generating these data is conducted separately and complementarily to the 200-million-dollar (USD) superfund project for ecological restoration of the UCFR, associated tributaries, and head water streams including Silver Bow and Warm Springs Creeks. Restoration along the UCFR in western Montana includes removal of metal-laden floodplain soils, lowering of the floodplain to its original elevation, and re-vegetation of over 70 km of the river’s floodplain closest to contaminant sources. The UCFR LTREB project includes bi-weekly water quality monitoring across the first 200 km of the river and its major tributaries along a gradient of heavy metal contamination associated with historic mining. Monitoring includes inorganic phosphorus and nitrogen concentrations, biotic standing stocks, and dissolved and whole-water heavy metal concentrations. The monitoring program began in 2017 with funding extended through 2028. The original analytical intent for these data was to assess the response of river dissolved organic carbon to the floodplain restoration. Data are total organic carbon combustion analyses (Shimadzu Scientific Instruments) of the concentration of organic carbon dissolved in filtered samples of well-mixed river thalweg water. Data are from the 2024 water year (1 Oct 2023 to 30 Sep 2024) from samples collected on the Upper Clark Fork River (USGS HUC 17010201) at project sites distributed along the river from the vicinity of Anaconda to Missoula, Montana, USA.more » « less
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The Upper Clark Fork River (UCFR) Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) umbrella monitoring project generating these data is conducted separately and complementarily to the 200-million-dollar (USD) superfund project for ecological restoration of the UCFR, associated tributaries, and head water streams including Silver Bow and Warm Springs Creeks. Restoration along the UCFR in western Montana includes removal of metal-laden floodplain soils, lowering of the floodplain to its original elevation, and re-vegetation of over 70 km of the river’s floodplain closest to contaminant sources. The UCFR LTREB project includes bi-weekly water quality monitoring across the first 200 km of the river and its major tributaries along a gradient of heavy metal contamination associated with historic mining. Monitoring includes inorganic phosphorus and nitrogen concentrations, biotic standing stocks, and dissolved and whole-water heavy metal concentrations. The monitoring program began in 2017 with funding likely to be extended through 2028. The original analytical intent for these data was to assess the response of river dissolved organic carbon to the floodplain restoration. Data are multispectral absorbance and fluorescence analyses of organic carbon dissolved in samples of well-mixed river thalweg water. Data include excitation-emission matrices, absorbance spectroscopy, as well as absorbance and fluorometric summary indices calculated at specific wavelengths of excitation and emission. Data are from the 2019 water year (1 Oct 2018 to 30 Sep 2019). Data were collected on the Upper Clark Fork River (USGS HUC 17010201) at 13 project sites distributed along the river from the vicinity of Anaconda to Missoula, Montana, USA.more » « less
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Abstract Positive correlation between trout abundance and dissolved metal concentrations along the Upper Clark Fork River (UCFR; Montana, USA) have forced restoration practitioners to seek underlying causes of reduced fish density beyond heavy metal contamination. Throughout the river, nutrient enrichment and summer algal blooms may be hindering full recovery of trout populations. In this study, we evaluated the community structure and metal body burdens of benthic invertebrates and characterized existing trophic linkages between brown trout and dominant invertebrate taxa before and during summer algal blooms in a downstream reach of the UCFR where fish densities are low (20–30 trout/km), and where metal contamination is relevant but minimal compared with upstream. In spring, estimated invertebrate abundance was 1,727 ± 217 individuals/m2and dominated by Ephemerellidae and Baetidae families. During summer algal bloom, invertebrate abundance increased 15‐fold (20,580 ± 3,510 individuals/m2) mostly due to greater abundance of Chironomidae, Hydropsychidae, and Simulidae. Copper body burdens (130 ± 42 ppm) were higher than any other heavy metal regardless of season, but detectable concentrations of arsenic, cadmium, and lead were also found. A Bayesian mixing model combining metal burdens and stable isotopes showed that in the spring, trout of average size (355 ± 65 g) relied mostly on epibenthic taxa (Ephemerellidae and Hydropsychidae), contrasting with small (<100 g) and large (>400 g) trout relying heavily on Baetidae, a major component of invertebrate drift. Foraging segregation related to trout size did not occur during summer algal blooms, which may reflect increasing influence of benthic algal proliferation or indicate the indiscriminate use of pool habitats as thermal refugia over summer conditions by trout of different ages.more » « less
