Saline soils are widespread in parts of the Front Range area north of the city of Denver. Farmers and ranchers often call these "alkali" soils. You may have noticed them as you drive along I-25 north of the Denver suburbs towards Fort Collins in spring and early summer. At that time of year, patches of saline soils are often covered with bright white salts (mostly sodium sulfate). These salts form in the spring when ground water is close to the surface because of spring rains and snow melt. The ground water wicks up to the surface and evaporates leaving the salt behind. Later in the summer, as the soils dry out, the ground-water level drops, water no longer wicks up to the surface leaving salt, and the highly soluble salts are usually flushed from the surface by an occasional summer thunderstorm or blown away by the wind. Often salt-tolerant weeds invade the site. In some places, where the water stays near the surface most of the year, the salts may persist into the fall. In other places, the water table stays at or above the ground surface all year and wetlands have formed. Cattails are a common wetland plant in this region. In the area of salt-rich soils, north of Denver, many of these wetlands can be saline. They can be recognized by the salt crusts that form in the soils at the edge of the wetlands or by the salts that precipitate on the plant stems in the wetland. The plants in the wetland are usually salt tolerant.
The USGS has studied saline soils and wetlands in the area north of Denver trying to understand how they form, why they form where they do, and whether some of man's activities causes some saline soils to occur. The area north of Denver has been heavily irrigated since the late 1800s, and coal mining and oil and gas production has occurred almost as long as irrigation. We are trying to understand whether these activities have contributed to saline soil formation.
The online linkage associated with the dataset citation links directly to a website that provides downloadable digital datasets. The online linkage under larger work citation links directly to the publication. http://rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/frontrange/ is the URL for the Colorado Front Range Infrastructure Resources Project homepage.
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U.S. Geological Survey, Box 25046, MS 939, Denver Federal Center
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USGS
Box 25286 Denver Federal Center
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Saline soils geographic features
ArcIMS Image Map Service
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U.S. Geological Survey, Box 25046, MS 939, Denver Federal Center
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