Implementing a Web-Based Streamflow Statistics Tool for South Dakota
Project Period: ongoing
Cooperator: South Dakota Department of Transportation, East Dakota Water Development District
Project Chief: Ryan Thompson
Executive Summary
Information about streamflow characteristics of South Dakota rivers and streams is needed by many agencies in the state to fulfill agency missions and legislative mandates. Information is commonly needed at ungaged sites where no observed flow data are available. Manual methods to determine streamflow statistics are slow and resource intensive, may produce results that are not reproducible, and often are not feasible for the public and non-hydrologists because they require training, multiple data sources, and expensive computer software and resources.
The objective of this study is to provide a Web-based interactive tool (StreamStats) for estimating streamflow statistics for any stream location within South Dakota for which applicable streamflow regression equations have been published. The Web tool will be simple to use, requiring only that the user click on a map to identify the stream location of interest; the Web tool will then delineate the watershed for the selected location, determine watershed characteristics, and calculate streamflow statistics for the selected stream location. The user can then download a map of the watershed of interest and a streamflow-statistics summary that includes confidence intervals and an explanation of the results. The web tool will be available to all so that the public as well as scientists and managers can quickly obtain information on basin characteristics and streamflow statistics. The Web tool will be a locally-applied component of a nationally-standardized analytical tool that is being developed by the USGS Office of Surface Water.
The Web tool produced by this project specifically fulfills the mission of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to focus on responsiveness and service to customers. The tool initially would provide flood magnitude and frequency information, and could later be expanded to include other streamflow information, such as low-flow statistics that relate to the health of stream environment and it’s biota.
An additional product will be vertically-integrated hydrologic data sets (elevation, hydrography, watershed boundaries, site locations) for Hydrologic Units in South Dakota. These geographic information system (GIS) datasets will exist within the ArcHydro framework, which will allow for integration and use in a multitude of water-resources projects where watershed characteristics as predictive variables need to be linked to a hydrologic flow-network for modeling watershed and stream-network processes.
Objective
The objective of this study is to provide a Web-based interactive tool (StreamStats) for determining streamflow statistics for any stream location within South Dakota for which applicable streamflow regression equations have been published. The Web tool will be simple to use, requiring only that the user click on a map to identify the stream location of interest. The Web tool will be available to all so that the public as well as scientists and managers can quickly obtain streamflow information. It will provide a downloadable set of results that will include a map of the watershed of interest, and a statistical summary that includes confidence intervals and an explanation of the results.
South Dakota StreamStats will be implemented using a tiling scheme of 8-digit hydrologic units derived from the Watershed Boundary Dataset. Processing is being initiated in basins where the National Elevation Dataset has 10-meter resolution source data. |
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
