National Geochemical Database: Reformatted data from the National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) Hydrogeochemical and Stream Sediment Reconnaissance (HSSR) program

Abstract

The National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) Hydrogeochemical and Stream Sediment Reconnaissance (HSSR) program produced a large amount of geochemical data. To fully understand how these data were generated, it is recommended that you read the History of NURE HSSR Program for a summary of the entire program. By the time the NURE program had ended, the HSSR data consisted of 894 separate data files stored with 47 different formats. Many files contained duplication of data found in other files. The University of Oklahoma's Information Systems Programs of the Energy Resources Institute (ISP) was contracted by the Department of Energy to enhance the accessibility and usefulness of the NURE HSSR data. ISP created a single standard-format master file to replace the 894 original files. ISP converted 817 of the 894 original files before its funding apparently ran out. The ISP-reformatted NURE data files have been released by the USGS on CD-ROM (Lower 48 States, Hoffman and Buttleman, 1994; Alaska, Hoffman and Buttleman, 1996). A description of each NURE database field, derived from a draft NURE HSSR data format manual (unpubl. commun., Stan Moll, ISP, Oct 7, 1988), was included in a readme file on each CD-ROM. That original manual was incomplete and assumed that the reformatting process had gone to completion. A lot of vital information was not included. Efforts to correct that manual and the NURE data revealed a large number of problems and missing data. As a result of the frustrating process of cleaning and re-cleaning data from the ISP-reformatted NURE files, a new NURE HSSR data format was developed. This work represents a totally new attempt to reformat the original NURE files into 2 consistent database structures; one for water samples and a second for sediment samples, on a quadrangle by quadrangle basis, from the original NURE files. Although this USGS-reformatted NURE HSSR data format is different than that created by the ISP, many of their ideas were incorporated and expanded in this effort. All of the data from each quadrangle are being examined thoroughly in an attempt to eliminate problems, to combine partial or duplicate records, to convert all coding to a common scheme, and to identify problems even if they can not be solved at this time.