DISCLAIMER: These data are preliminary or provisional and are subject to revision. They are being provided to meet the need for timely best science. The data have not received final approval by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and are provided on the condition that neither the USGS nor the U.S. Government shall be held liable for any damages resulting from the authorized or unauthorized use of the data.
River discharge measurements are routinely collected at thousands of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) streamgaging stations annually to develop and maintain the stations’ rating curves (Eberts and others, 2018). Bathymetric or cross-section measurements are essential for computing streamflows, and these measurements are stored in Aquarius, the internal USGS platform for hydrologic time series data. In 2022, the National Hydrologic Geospatial Fabric (NHGF) initiated a project to retrieve cross-section data from Aquarius and build a provisional database supporting nationwide hydrologic modeling applications. The cross-section data are considered provisional as they do not undergo the same rigorous review process applied to the final discharge measurements published to the National Water Information System (NWIS), which is the public platform for hydrologic time series data. However, the database is provided on a provisional basis and versioned to allow for continuous improvements based on feedback from the user community. Future efforts will expand Aquarius data retrieval to include additional measurements, such as temperature and surface velocity, broadening the utility of these data for the hydrologic science community.
Each database of cross-sections is provided as an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) GeoPackage file for each water year, defined as the 12-month period from October 1 to September 30 of the following year. The GeoPackage file is organized into many thousands of layers containing individual cross-section tables collected via two primary methodologies used by hydrographers to obtain discharge measurements: the mid-section method and the moving boat acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) method (Turnipseed and Sauer, 2010). Please see the accompanying metadata and README documentation for each child item for more details regarding the database structure and contents. For further information on the cross-section database or to discuss how it may be used with your project application, please reach out to Amanda Whaling (awhaling@usgs.gov).
Cover image: Photograph of a USGS hydrographer making a FlowTracker acoustic Doppler velocimeter discharge measurement at Little Eagle Creek at Speedway, Ind. (USGS station no. 03353600) using the mid-section method; on the right, photograph of a USGS hydrographer making a tethered boat acoustic Doppler current profiler discharge measurement from a cableway at the Snake River near Moran, Wyo. (USGS station no. 13011000) using the moving-boat ADCP method. Photographs and caption adapted from the cover of 'Discharge Measurements at Gaging Stations' (Turnipseed and Sauer, 2010).
References Cited:
Eberts, S., Woodside, M., Landers, M., Wagner, C., 2018, Monitoring the pulse of our Nation’s rivers and streams—The U.S. Geological Survey streamgaging network. U.S. Geol. Surv. Fact Sheet 2018-3021, https://doi.org/10.3133/fs20183081.
Turnipseed, D.P., and Sauer, V.B., 2010, Discharge measurements at gaging stations: U.S. Geological Survey Techniques and Methods book 3, chap. A8, 87 p. (Also available at http://pubs.usgs.gov/tm/tm3-a8/.).
