Design and Compilation of a Geodatabase of Existing Salinity Information for the Rio Grande Basin, from the Rio Arriba-Sandoval County Line, New Mexico, to Presidio, Texas, 2010

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, compiled salinity-related water-quality data and information in a geodatabase containing more than 6,000 sampling sites. The geodatabase was designed as a tool for water-resource management and includes readily available digital data sources from the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas, Paso del Norte Watershed Council, numerous other State and local databases, and selected databases maintained by the University of Arizona and New Mexico State University. Salinity information was compiled for an approximately 26,000-square-mile area of the Rio Grande Basin from the Rio Arriba-Sandoval County line, New Mexico, to Presidio, Texas. The geodatabase relates the spatial location of sampling sites with salinity-related water-quality data reported by multiple agencies. The sampling sites are stored in a geodatabase feature class; each site is linked by a relationship class to the corresponding sample and results stored in data tables.