Stream biochemistry concentration and flux data have been collected for decades in watersheds in the Experimental Forests and Ranges (EFR) network, managed by USDA Forest Service. These data have been and continue to be used to identify natural or external sources of elevated nutrients in streams and to quantify the effectiveness of forest practices. They also represent essential information towards informing state and federal agencies about achievable nutrient levels.

This project aims to:

1) Increase our understanding of water quality variability and responses to watershed change across North America. On-going synthesis papers:

• Trends in N concentrations in reference basins across US
• Addressing nutrient criteria using reference basin data
• Effects of forest disturbance on stream chemistry dynamics, concentrations and fluxes
• Cross site comparison of effects of different methods for calculating nutrient loads

2) Stream ChemDB: Develop a publicly accessible database of stream chemistry data from long-term sites within the Forest Service Experimental Forest Network and LTER Networks as well as additional forested sites.