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  • Lake chloride concentrations and model predictions for 49,432 lakes in the Midwest and Northeast United States.
  • Dugan, Hilary A; University of Wisconsin-Madison
    Skaff, Nicholas K; University of California, Berkeley University
    Doubek, Jonathan P; Lake Superior State University
    Burke, Samantha M; University of Guelph
    Krivak-Tetley, Flora E; Dartmouth College
    Summers, Jamie C
  • 2019-12-11
  • Dugan, H.A., N.K. Skaff, J.P. Doubek, S.M. Burke, F.E. Krivak-Tetley, and J.C. Summers. 2019. Lake chloride concentrations and model predictions for 49,432 lakes in the Midwest and Northeast United States. ver 1. Environmental Data Initiative. https://doi.org/DOI_PLACE_HOLDER (Accessed 2024-12-29).

  • Lakes in the Midwest and Northeast United States are at risk of anthropogenic chloride contamination, but we have little knowledge of the prevalence and spatial distribution of the problem. The majority of salt pollution in north temperate regions stems from road salt application but other chloride sources include water softeners, synthetic fertilizers, and livestock excretion. Although chloride contamination of lakes is well documented, it is unknown how many lakes are at risk of long-term salinization. We used a quantile regression forest to leverage information from 2,773 lakes to predict the chloride concentration of all 49,432 lakes greater than 4 ha in a 17-state area. The QRF used 22 predictor variables, which included lake morphometry characteristics, watershed land use, and distance to the nearest interstate and road. Model predictions had an r2 of 0.94 for all chloride observations, and 0.87 for predictions of the mean chloride concentration observed at each lake.

  • N: 49.42      S: 36.56      E: -68.19      W: -96.73
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  • DOI PLACE HOLDER
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