The National Carbon Sequestration Database and Geographic Information System (NATCARB) Saline spatial database is a small-scale (large-area) overview of carbon dioxide (CO2) geologic storage potential in saline formations across the USA and parts of Canada. Saline formations are composed of brine-saturated porous rock and capped by one or more regionally extensive, low-permeability rock formations. Only saline formations containing formation fluid with total dissolved solids (TDS) greater than 10,000 ppm merited evaluation for potential CO2 storage. A saline storage resource can include one named geologic stratigraphic unit or be defined as only a part of a stratigraphic unit. This data layer reflects the best available knowledge regarding the location of carbon sequestration potential in the USA and Canada, both onshore and offshore.
NATCARB is administered by the US Dept. of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and contains data provided by several Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships (RCSP). RCSPs originally developed the data per individual geologic storage resource, or as continuous surface models, and then converted these data into a 10 km X 10 km vector "grid". The NATCARB Team at the Kansas Geological Survey compiled the regional datasets into a single, seamless layer.