Fact Sheet 2013–3041
AbstractThe U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provides streamflow and other related information needed by water-resource managers responsible for protecting people and property from floods, planning and managing water-resource activities, and protecting water quality. Streamflow statistics provided by the USGS, such as the 1-percent annual exceedance probability (100-year flood) and the 7-day 10-year low flow, are frequently used by engineers, flood forecasters, land managers, biologists, and others to guide their everyday decisions. Additionally, resource managers often need to know basin characteristics, the physical and climatic characteristics of a drainage basin, to help understand the mechanisms that control water availability, water quality, and aquatic habitats at various locations. Users of streamflow information often require streamflow statistics and basin characteristics at various locations along a stream. The USGS periodically calculates and publishes streamflow statistics and basin characteristics for streamflowgaging stations and partial-record stations, but these data commonly are scattered among many reports that may or may not be readily available to the public. The USGS also provides and periodically updates regional analyses of streamflow statistics that include regression equations and other prediction methods for estimating statistics for ungaged and unregulated streams across the State. Use of these regional predictions for a stream can be complex and often requires the user to determine a number of basin characteristics that may require interpretation. Basin characteristics may include drainage area, classifiers for physical properties, climatic characteristics, and other inputs. Obtaining these input values for gaged and ungaged locations traditionally has been time consuming, subjective, and can lead to inconsistent results. |
First posted February 5, 2014 For additional information contact: Part or all of this report is presented in Portable Document Format (PDF). For best results viewing and printing PDF documents, it is recommended that you download the documents to your computer and open them with Adobe Reader. PDF documents opened from your browser may not display or print as intended. Download the latest version of Adobe Reader, free of charge. |
Pugh, A.L., 2014, Arkansas StreamStats—A U.S. Geological Survey Web map application for basin characteristics and streamflow statistics: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2013–3041, 2 p., https://dx.doi.org/10.3133/fs20133041.
ISSN 2327-6932 (online)
Introduction
Description of StreamStats
Regional Regression Equations
References