Great Bay Estuary, NH/ME, Box Model Water Chemistry, Flow, Precipitation, and Seagrass Coverage Data, 2008 - 2023.

This data repository contains compiled surface water (tributary and estuarine), wet deposition, and wastewater effluent chemistry, along with discharge, precipitation totals, and monthly effluent flows necessary for the completion of solute budgets for Great Bay, a subregion of Great Bay Estuary, NH/ME, USA. These datasets are part of on-going monitoring programs in the Great Bay Estuary and Lamprey River Hydrological Observatory. A subset of the monitoring data for the 2008 to 2023 period was compiled. The tributary and estuarine monitoring data were requested from the NH Department of Environmental Services Environmental Monitoring Database as part of the Tidal Tributary and Estuary Water Quality Monitoring Programs. The wet deposition chemistry record is maintained as part of the Lamprey River Hydrologic Observatory. Wastewater effluent chemistry was downloaded from the EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online Database. The annual (1996 - 2023) seagrass coverage dataset for Great Bay Estuary reflects coverage of Zostera marina seagrass only and was compiled from annual monitoring reports. Mean daily instantaneous discharge data for the three tidal tributaries used in the load calculations are available from the USGS National Water Information System. Hourly precipitation volume data for the Durham, NH SSW station are available from the NCDC U.S. Climate Reference Network, with minor hourly gaps filled using the University of New Hampshire Durham weather station (https://www.weather.unh.edu).