Mississippi Sound environmental characteristics during Bonnet Carré Spillway operations

The Bonnet Carré Spillway is a flood control structure operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prevent flooding of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, when Mississippi River flow exceeds 1.25 million cubic feet per second. Operation of the spillway requires opening bays which allow Mississippi River water to pass through the spillway, into Lake Pontchartrain, which then flows out into the western Mississippi Sound. Bonnet Carré Spillway openings have occurred 15 times since its construction completed in the early 1930s, but are becoming more frequent. This data set documents the operation of the Bonnet Carré Spillway through its history, with the first opening in 1937 and the most recent in 2020 and for the openings occurring within the past decade, documents the environmental conditions within the Mississippi Sound to evaluate how these operations influence the salinity and temperature of the local estuary compared to conditions in years without openings. Therefore, the full environmental data set spans from 2010 to 2022. The data files contain an associated meta data file describing the variables within each file along with units, and any relevant notes on calculations or coordinates of model output that generated data points.