Woodchip Bioreactor Performance Data from a 249-Hectare Watershed, 2016-2017

Four drainage discharge files, four water chemistry files, and three 5-minute concentration and load files support a study on nitrate removal at a catchment scale. Measurements were taken from the outlet of a 249-hectare watershed in southern Minnesota from September 2016 through July 2017. The data was collected by the Department of Agriculture to determine the nitrate removal performance of a woodchip bioreactor system.

Use Cases

• Modeling nitrate load reduction based on discharge and concentration data from three bioreactor beds.
• Analyzing the relationship between hydraulic residence time and nutrient removal efficiency using daily timestep data.
• Correlating water temperature with bioreactor performance using inlet and outlet temperature measurements.
• Calculating flow-weighted concentrations and mass loads for parameters like nitrate-N and total-P over 5-minute intervals.

Strengths

• Discharge data collected at a 5-minute time interval for high temporal resolution.
• Water chemistry includes multiple parameters such as nitrate-N, ammonium-N, total-P, and sulfate-S.
• Dataset is associated with a peer-reviewed journal article, providing methodological context.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to a single watershed in southern Minnesota.

Provenance

Source

Department of Agriculture via datagov.

Collection Method

Discharge measured with an area velocity sensor and pressure transducers; water samples collected manually or by automated samplers with a flow-weighted scheme.

Time Range

September 2016 through July 2017.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 22:48:26.457206; freshness should be verified.

Geography

A 249-hectare watershed in southern Minnesota.