Point shapefile of continuous resistivity profiling data below the sediment water interface processed with a varying water conductivity value from Indian River Bay, Delaware, on U.S. Geological Survey Field Activity 2010-006-FA in April 2010 (MRGWCON_ALLXYZRES.SHP, Geographic, WGS 84)

The continuous resistivity profile (CRP) system used on this cruise was an AGI SuperSting marine system described at the website: www.agiusa.com/marinesystem.shtml. The particular system used for this acquisition was a 50-m streamer with an 11 electrode array with electrodes spaced 5 meters apart. The source electrodes are graphite, while the receiver electrodes are stainless steel. A dipole-dipole configuration was used for the data collection in which two fixed current electrodes are assigned with the measurement of voltage potential between electrode pairs in the remaining electrodes. The maximum depth below the water surface the streamer can reach is approximately 1/4 the streamer length. So for the 50-m streamer, maximum depth is about 12.5 meters. Each line of data acquisition records several files. The two files necessary for processing are the *.stg and the *.gps file. The STG file contains the resistivity data, while the GPS file contains the navigation information. The navigation system used in concert with the CRP system is a Lowrance LMS-480M with an LGC-2000 GPS antenna and a 200 kHz fathometer transducer. The antenna and fathometer transducer were mounted on the starboard side of the boat. The streamer tow point was on the port side aft. The layback offset between the navigation antenna and the first electrode was 17.6 meters on April 13 and 14. On April 15 the antenna and transducer were moved 1.6 m aft changing the layback offset to 16 m. This layback offset is accounted for by the acquisition system. The approximately 2 m lateral offset is not accounted for. The Lowrance transducer also contains a temperature sensor. Lowrance indicates the speed of sound used by the system is 4800 feet/second. Both the temperature and depth information are recorded in the logged GPS file. There are instances where no depth or temperature information is recorded due to an equipment problem. The CRP system images the subsurface electrical properties of an estuarine, riverine or lacustrine environment. Resistivity differences can be attributed to subsurface geology (conductive vs less conductive layers) and hydrogeologic conditions with fresh water exhibiting high resistivity and saline conditions showing low resistivity.

One of the resulting files from processing resistivity data with AGI's EarthImager software is an XYZ file. This XYZ file has three columns of information: distance along line (meters), resistivity reading depth (meters), resistivity value (ohm-m). One of the resulting files from linearization of the raw STG resistivity data is a DEP file. The DEP file has four columns of information: distance along line (meters), water depth (meters), latitude, longitude. This DEP file is dependent on the presence of bathymetry data in the originally recorded GPS file, or the addition of bathymetry information to that GPS file. This DEP file is used in the EarthImager processing and is carried over to the processing output. The MATLAB script justbelowsed.m combines these two data files such that the output is only the resistivity values that fall at or below the sediment water interface. This script was written by the USGS in Woods Hole. In order to have a value at the sediment water interface, the software usually has to interpolate values. The version of MATLAB used for these data was MATLAB 7.5.0.342 (R2007b). An example of the script usage in MATLAB is: justbelowsed('L10F1_lin_AllInvRes.xyz','L10F1_lin_wres.dep'). The output is: L10F1_lin_AllInvRes_jbsed.xyz. This resulting XYZ file has 5 columns of information: distance along line (meters); depth below water surface (meters); depth below sediment/water interface (meters); resistivity value (ohm-m); log(10) resistivity value. This process step and all subsequent process steps were performed by the same person - VeeAnn A. Cross.

Using ArcMap 9.2 and VACExtras v 2.1 (extension developed by the USGS in Woods Hole) these XYZ files are converted to shapefiles. The tool in VACExtras to do this is "convert resistivity to shapefile". This tool requires the data frame be in a UTM projection, the active layer in the data frame needs to be a polyline shapefile with one record selected (the polyline navigation file) and the user is prompted for the file from justbelowsed.m. The program uses the distance along value to find an actual latitude and longitude. The software assumes the datum of the data layer and the data frame projection are the same. The conversion of the Easting and Northing locations to latitudes and longitudes is done by the tool. The result is a point shapefile with 11 columns of information. The Id attribute is automatically generated upon creation of a shapefile, the "line" attribute is the line name as indicated within the polyline shapefile that the program prompts the user for, "dist" is the distance along attribute carried over from the MATLAB file, the attributes of location information (latitude, longitude, utmx, utmy) are calculated by the tool, the attributes depth, dep_b_sed, resvalue, and reslogval are carried over from the MATLAB file. The Entity and Attribute section further describes these attributes and their units. An individual point shapefile is generated for each selected CRP polyline.

With all the individual point shapefiles processed with water conductivity values in ArcMap 9.2, ArcToolbox - Data management Tools - General - Merge was used to combine the individual files into a single shapefile. The input was all the individual point shapefiles, with the output being mrgwcon_allxyzres.shp. The field mapping was left at the defaults as all the input shapefiles have the same attributes.

Edits to the metadata were made to fix any errors that MP v 2.9.36 flagged. This is necessary to enable the metadata to be successfully harvested for various data catalogs. In some cases, this meant adding text "Information unavailable" or "Information unavailable from original metadata" for those required fields that were left blank. Other minor edits were probably performed (title, publisher, publication place, etc.). Attempted to modify http to https where appropriate. Moved the minimal source information provided to make it the first process step. The metadata date (but not the metadata creator) was edited to reflect the date of these changes. The metadata available from a harvester may supersede metadata bundled within a download file. Compare the metadata dates to determine which metadata file is most recent.

Added keywords section with USGS persistent identifier as theme keyword.