The Lake Tahoe Basin Stream Catchment Database: A resource for water quality monitoring in the basin

Although the Lake Tahoe Basin and its receiving waterbody, Lake Tahoe, are intensively monitored, managed, and studied, there has been no centralized resource for evaluating variation in environmental characteristics among watersheds (i.e., catchments). To address this opportunity, we compiled and calculated 161 variables for 60 non-overlapping contiguous watersheds draining to Lake Tahoe . Watershed-scale variables include climatic, topographic, vegetation, edaphic, hydrologic, and anthropogenic characteristics. Data were downloaded from publicly-available sources including: the National Elevation Dataset, USDA SSURGO soils, Calfire FRAP dataset of fire perimeters, the National Land Cover Dataset, and the Rangeland Analysis Platform. We compiled data in a Geographic Information System at the scale of the watershed. Existing and custom scripts were used to process data and derive variables that could not be obtained from existing databases. These data will be useful for environmental managers and scientists who work in the Lake Tahoe Basin and can assist with future site selection intended to span environmental gradients.尽管太浩湖流域（Lake Tahoe Basin）及其受纳水体太浩湖（Lake Tahoe）已得到高强度的监测、管理与研究，但目前仍缺乏可用于评估流域（watershed，即集水区catchments）间环境特征差异的集中式资源。为填补这一研究空白，我们针对60个汇入太浩湖的非重叠连续流域，整理并计算了161项变量。流域尺度变量涵盖气候、地形、植被、土壤（edaphic）、水文以及人为活动特征。数据从以下公开数据源下载获取：国家高程数据集（National Elevation Dataset）、美国农业部（USDA）SSURGO土壤数据集、加州消防局FRAP火灾边界数据集（Calfire FRAP dataset of fire perimeters）、国家土地覆盖数据集（National Land Cover Dataset）以及牧场分析平台（Rangeland Analysis Platform）。我们基于地理信息系统（Geographic Information System），按照流域尺度对数据进行了汇编。我们使用现有脚本与自定义脚本对数据进行处理，并推导得到了无法从现有数据库直接获取的变量。本数据集可供太浩湖流域的环境管理人员与科研人员使用，可辅助未来覆盖环境梯度的选址工作。