Long-term record of lake and stream biogeochemistry from the Loch Vale Watershed, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA: 1981-2024

The Loch Vale Watershed (LVWS) Project is a long-term research and monitoring program that addresses watershed-scale ecosystem processes, particularly as they respond to atmospheric deposition and climate variability. The LVWS is a 7-km2 high-altitude basin located within Rocky Mountain National Park in the Colorado Front Range (Colorado, United States of America). This dataset includes year-round measurements of physical water parameters, nutrients, major ions, trace metals, silica, and chlorophyll collected from lakes and streams within the LVWS basin.

Related data entities:

Scanned field notebooks from the Loch Vale Watershed Project from 1981-2023 are available via this published data release: https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/6723cba2d34e4f57573e8e45.

Quality assurance reports from the Loch Vale Watershed Project are available for specific time periods and can be found at the following locations:
1983-1987: included in this data release under "Other Entities", file name LWVS_QAreport_1983to1987_Denning
1988: included in this data release under "Other Entities", file name LWVS_QAreport_1988_Denning
1989-1990: included in this data release under "Other Entities", file name LWVS_QAreport_1989to1990_Edwards
1995-1998: https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr99111
1999-2002: https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20041306
2003-2009: https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20111137
2010-2019: https://doi.org/10.3133/tm1D9

The most recent methods manual is included in full in this data release under "Other Entities", file name "LVWS Methods Manual". Please refer to this manual for the detailed methods.