Data and scripts used in water-quality trend and load analysis in the Heart River Basin, North Dakota, 1970-2020

A comprehensive study to evaluate salinity and nutrient conditions in the Heart River Basin, North Dakota was completed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Grant County Soil Conservation District. In this dataset three zipped folders are provided which contain all files necessary to run trend, load, and geochemical models and produce results published in U.S. Geological Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5013 [Tatge, W.S., Nustad, R.A., and Galloway, J.M., 2022, Evaluation of Salinity and Nutrient Conditions in the Heart River Basin, North Dakota, 1970-2020: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5013]. In addition, this dataset contains data for streamflow, and water-quality by group (MI = major ion and dissolved solids, NUT = nutrients, PHY = physical parameters) contained in comma separated values (csv) files (site_flow and group_descstats) for 23 sites used in trend, load, geochemical, and spatial analysis of the Heart River Basin. Streamflow data for the selected sites were gathered from the National Water Information System (https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis). Water-quality data for the selected sites were gathered from the National Water Quality Monitoring Council Water Quality Portal (https://www.waterqualitydata.us/) and collected by two addtional agencies NDDEQ and the USGS.