Hydrologic Information System for the Nation

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Hydrologic Information System for the Nation

• David R. Maidment
• Director
• Center for Research
• in Water Resources,
• University of Texas
• at Austin

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Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of
Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI)
CUAHSI HydroView Components

• Supported by the National Science Foundation
• Develops cyberinfrastructure and services for
  hydrologic science in US universities
• Legally independent organization based in
  Washington DC

Hydrologic Synthesis
Hydrologic Observatories
Hydrologic Information Systems
Measurement Technology
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CUAHSI HIS Partner Institutions
Project Collaborator
CUAHSI Member
CUAHSI has 110 member universities
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HIS Goals

• Hydrologic Data Access System better access to
  a large volume of high quality hydrologic data
• Support for Observatories synthesizing
  hydrologic data for a region
• Advancement of Hydrologic Science data modeling
  and advanced analysis
• Hydrologic Education better data in the
  classroom, basin-focused teaching

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CUAHSI Member Survey Results
Which of the four HIS goals is most important to
you?

• Most used applications are
• Excel
• ArcGIS
• Matlab
• Then come programming languages
• Fortran
• C/C
• Visual Basic

Data Access
Science
Observatories
Education
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CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System
A multiscale web portal system for water data and
models
North American and Global
11,000,000 scale
United States
1500,000 scale
River Basin
1100,000 scale
Watershed
124,000 scale
11200 scale
River reach
Point scale
A home
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Water Data
Water quantity and quality
Rainfall Snow
Soil water
Modeling
Meteorology
Remote sensing
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Water Data Web Sites
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NWISWeb site output
agency_cd Agency Code site_no USGS
station number dv_dt date of daily mean
streamflow dv_va daily mean streamflow
value, in cubic-feet per-second dv_cd
daily mean streamflow value qualification
code Sites in this file include USGS
02087500 NEUSE RIVER NEAR CLAYTON,
NC agency_cd site_no dv_dt dv_va dv_cd USGS 0208
7500 2003-09-01 1190 USGS 02087500 2003-09-02 649
USGS 02087500 2003-09-03 525 USGS 02087500 2003
-09-04 486 USGS 02087500 2003-09-05 733 USGS 020
87500 2003-09-06 585 USGS 02087500 2003-09-07 485
USGS 02087500 2003-09-08 463 USGS 02087500 2003
-09-09 673 USGS 02087500 2003-09-10 517 USGS 020
87500 2003-09-11 454
Time series of streamflow at a gaging station
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CUAHSI Hydrologic Data Access System
http//river.sdsc.edu/HDAS
NASA
NCDC
EPA
NWS
USGS
Observatory Data
A common data window for accessing, viewing and
downloading hydrologic information

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Observation Stations
Observation Stations Map for the US
Ameriflux Towers (NASA DOE)
NOAA Automated Surface Observing System
USGS National Water Information System
NOAA Climate Reference Network
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NWIS Station Observation Metadata
Describe what has been measured at this station
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Data Sources
NAWQA
Storet
Ameriflux
LTER
NCDC
Extract
NWIS
NCAR
Transform
CUAHSI Web Services
Excel
Visual Basic
ArcGIS
C/C
Load
Matlab
Fortran
Access
SAS
Applications
Some operational services
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Web Page Scraping
http//nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/discharge?site
_no02087500agency_cdUSGS....
Programmatically construct a URL string as
produced by manual use of the web page
Parse the resulting ASCII file
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CUAHSI Web Services
Web Application Data Portal

• Your application
• Excel, ArcGIS, Matlab
• Fortran, C/C, Visual Basic
• Hydrologic model
• .

• Your operating system
• Windows, Unix, Linux, Mac

Internet
Simple Object Access Protocol
Web Services Library
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Transfer of Research Results

• Friday Oct 28 I announced the NWIS web services
  in a CUAHSI cyberseminar
• Wednesday Nov 2 Jason Love, from a private firm,
  RESPEC, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, posted on
  the EPA Basins list server Occasionally one
  comes across something that is worth sharing the
  CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Systems - Web
  Services Library for NWIS is a valuable tool for
  those of us interested in rapidly acquiring and
  processing data from the USGS, e.g., calibrating
  models and performing watershed assessments.
• He provided a tutorial on how to use the services
  with Matlab

Technology transfer from academia to private
sector to public sector took less than 1 week!
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Series and Fields
Features
Series ordered sequence of numbers
Point, line, area, volume Discrete space
representation
Time series indexed by time Frequency series
indexed by frequency
Surfaces
Fields multidimensional arrays
Scalar fields single value at each
location Vector fields magnitude and direction
Random fields probability distribution
Continuous space representation
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North American Regional Reanalysis of Climate
Precipitation
Evaporation
Variation during the day, July 2003
NetCDF format
mm / 3 hours
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Digital Watershed
How can hydrologists integrate observed and
modeled data from various sources into a single
description of the environment?
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Digital Watershed
Hydrologic Observation Series
Geospatial Data
Digital Watershed
Remote Sensing Fields
Weather andClimate Fields
A digital watershed is an overlay of observation
series and fields on a geospatial framework to
form a connected database for a hydrologic region
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Digital WatershedPrototype for the Neuse basin
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CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System
Hydrologic Information System
Hydrologic Observing System
Hydrologic Modeling System
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Watershed Hydrovolumes
Hydrovolume
Geovolume is the portion of a hydrovolume that
contains solid earth materials
USGS Gaging stations
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Water Balance Model
Vertical water fluxes of evaporation,
precipitation, and groundwater, and inflow and
outflow in streams, change water storage in
watershed
Precipitation
Evaporation
Storage
Streamflow
Streamflow
How much water do we have? George W. Bush
during 1996 Texas drought
Groundwater recharge
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Water Balancing Model
Fields
Series
Geospatial
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Water OneStop

• Like Geospatial OneStop, we need a Water
  OneStop a common window for water data and
  models
• Advancement of water science is critically
  dependent on integration of water information