Data for assessment of sediment, soil, and water quality at Ashfield flats reserve, Western Australia

Andrew W Rate; Gavan S McGrath

doi:10.1016/j.dib.2022.107970

Data for assessment of sediment, soil, and water quality at Ashfield flats reserve, Western Australia

Data Brief. 2022 Feb 19:41:107970. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2022.107970. eCollection 2022 Apr.

Authors

Andrew W Rate¹, Gavan S McGrath²

Affiliations

¹ School of Agriculture and Environment, The University of Western Australia, WA 6009, Perth, Australia.
² Biodiversity and Conservation Science, Department of Biodiversity, Conservation, and Attractions, Kensington, WA 6151, Australia.

Abstract

Sediment and water samples were collected using transects and grids within sampling strata, in 2019, 2020, and 2021 from a riparian reserve adjoining the Swan River estuary in Western Australia. Different sampling designs were used each year, with transects and/or grids designed to assess changes in sediment and water quality across assumed environmental gradients such as salinity or distance from possible contaminant sources. Sediments were from 0-10cm; pH and electrical conductivity were measured on suspensions, 32 elements measured by ICP-OES on HNO₃/HCl digests, and microplastics counted microscopically after Fenton digestion and density separation. Surface water was from wetland ponds and stormwater drains, with pH, EC measured in-situ. Filtered acidified water subsamples used to measure nitrate + nitrite and dissolved phosphate spectrophotometrically and 26 elements using ICP-OES. Reported data include metadata and are for 231 sediment/soil samples and 172 water samples, including sampling strata categories and UTM and Longitude-Latitude coordinates. Elemental concentrations have been censored based on blank subtraction and calculated lower detection limits, with censored data presented with missing value codes.

Keywords: Contamination; Nutrients; Pollution; Stormwater; Trace elements; Wetlands.