U.S. Stream and Lake Temperature Models with Benthic Macroinvertebrate Data

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data repository contains modeled stream and lake temperatures alongside benthic macroinvertebrate (BMI) assemblage data for the conterminous United States. The data supports analyses of how temperature influences the distribution of aquatic invertebrates across different ecosystem types. The repository was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Model benthic macroinvertebrate taxon distributions as a function of predicted stream and lake temperature.
• Compare temperature response curves for shared taxa between lotic (stream) and lentic (lake) ecosystems.
• Analyze spatial patterns of BMI assemblage composition across the conterminous U.S. using geospatial coordinates.
• Validate temperature-driven ecological models with observed or modeled taxon presence/absence or abundance data.

Strengths

• Data covers the conterminous United States, providing national-scale coverage.
• Includes both stream and lake ecosystems, allowing for comparative analysis.
• Associated modeling code is publicly available on a U.S. EPA GitHub repository for reproducibility.

Limitations

• Specific row counts, column details, and sample sizes are not provided in the metadata.
• Data quality is contingent on the accuracy of the underlying temperature and biological models.
• The 'other-license-specified' license requires careful review for usage terms.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).

Collection Method

Modeled data generated from source environmental data, with code available on GitHub.

Freshness

Last updated in April 2026.

Geography

Conterminous United States (streams and lakes).