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Soil and surface water nitrogen and caffeine data from 2019, and 2019-2020 trail counts of hikers in Loch Vale Watershed, Rocky Mountain National Park

Dates

Publication Date
Start Date
2019
End Date
2020

Citation

Baron, J.S., Weinmann, T., and Acharya, K., 2023, Soil and surface water nitrogen and caffeine data from 2019, and 2019-2020 trail counts of hikers in Loch Vale Watershed, Rocky Mountain National Park: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P95IOUKH.

Summary

Daily visitor use in Rocky Mountain National Park has increased substantially since 2014, raising questions about the impact of human waste on water quality in popular areas without latrines. Human urine contributes nitrogen, and the ecological and biogeochemical effects of nitrogen from atmospheric deposition have long been the topic of study in Loch Vale watershed, Rocky Mountain National Park. Nitrogen from atmospheric deposition has been found previously to lead to lake eutrophication and altered algal species assemblages. Our data were collected to evaluate the impacts of visitors to a popular alpine watershed in Rocky Mountain National Park. There are three separate data files: soil sample locations and concentrations of nitrate, [...]

Contacts

Point of Contact :
Jill S Baron
Originator :
Jill S Baron, Timothy J Weinmann, Kirk Acharya
Metadata Contact :
GS-RMA-FORT Data Management
Publisher :
U.S. Geological Survey
Distributor :
U.S. Geological Survey - ScienceBase
SDC Data Owner :
Fort Collins Science Center
USGS Mission Area :
Ecosystems

Attached Files

Click on title to download individual files attached to this item.

LochValeTrailCountsSummaryTable.csv 5.87 KB text/csv
Metadata_SoilCaf.csv 3.85 KB text/csv
Metadata_WaterCaf.csv 3.14 KB text/csv

Purpose

The data were collected as part of a study to quantify the impact of human urine on the nitrogen budget in a long-term research watershed, Loch Vale, in Rocky Mountain National Park. Visitor use has increased greatly since 2012 to nearly 4.7 million people. Trail counts of visitors to Loch Vale enumerated more than 30,000 and 45, 000 visitors between May and August in 2019 and 2020, respectively. The contribution of nitrate from urine was measured in soils and surface waters, and scaled to the watershed and to an entire year with a model. The input of nitrate from urine was compared with the other major source of N, wet atmospheric deposition. These data are useful beyond our study for comparison of soil solute chemistry in subalpine ecosystems, water chemistry in alpine and subalpine lakes, and visitor traffic and impacts on back-country trails.

Map

Communities

  • Fort Collins Science Center (FORT)
  • USGS Data Release Products

Tags

Provenance

Additional Information

Identifiers

Type Scheme Key
DOI https://www.sciencebase.gov/vocab/category/item/identifier doi:10.5066/P95IOUKH

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