LAGOS Lake nutrient, carbon and chlororphyll data to evaluate biases in lake water quality sampling practices in a 17-state region of the US

This dataset includes data for eight major limnological variables in LAGOS-NE_LIMNO v. 1.087.1 that were used to evaluate biases in lake water quality sampling and implications for macroscale research (Stanley et al. In Revision, Limnology and Oceanography). Most observations came from LAGOS-NE_LIMNO v. 1.087.1, an integrated database of lake ecosystems (Soranno et al. 2015, Soranno et al. 2017) but were supplemented with additional data from the State of New Hampshire. LAGOS-NE contains information on lakes great than or equal to 1 ha (originally derived from the U.S. Geological Survey's 2013 National Hydrography Dataset) for a 17-state region of the U.S., and a subset of the lakes has observational data on lake chemistry and productivity. Approximately 87 different sources of data were compiled for the LAGOS-NELIMNO v. 1.087.1 dataset and were mostly generated by government agencies (state, federal, tribal) and universities. In this analysis, we compiled data for eight major limnological variables (Secchi disk depth, chlorophyll, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, nitrate, ammonium, true water color, and dissolved organic carbon) and geographic characteristics of lakes (location, lake area, depth, perimeter, watershed area) to evaluate biases in different limnological properties over space and time.