Project Overview

Full Title
Development of StreamStats in the Upper French Broad River Basin, North Carolina: A Pilot Water-Resources Web Application

Location
 Transylvania, Henderson and Buncombe Counties

Partner Agencies
North Carolina Department of Transportation

Project Chief
Chad Wagner
cwagner@usgs.gov

Period of Project
2007 - 2008

Team Members
Kirsten Tighe
Silvia Terziotti

Science Topic
Hydrologic and Geospatial data

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Upper French Broad StreamStats

Introduction

View of the StreamStats user interface for the North Carolina pilot application in the upper French Broad river basin.

StreamStats is a Web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) application that was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI) to provide access to an assortment of analytical tools that are useful for water-resources planning and management. StreamStats allows users to easily obtain streamflow statistics, basin characteristics, and descriptive information for USGS data-collection sites and selected ungaged sites. StreamStats also allows users to identify stream reaches upstream and downstream from user-selected sites and obtain information for locations along streams where activities occur that can affect streamflow conditions. This functionality can be accessed through a map-based interface with the user’s Web browser or through individual functions requested remotely through other Web applications (Ries and others, 2008).

StreamStats provides an accurate, consistent and fast process for computing basin characteristics and streamflow statistics. Streamflow statistics for gaged sites are immediately accessible without the need to obtain the original publications containing the original statistics. Examples of streamflow statistics that can be obtained from StreamStats include the 1-percent exceedance level flood, mean annual flow, and 7-day, 10-percent exceedance level low flow. Examples of basin characteristics that can be computed in StreamStats include drainage area, stream slope, mean annual precipitation and percentage of forested area (Ries and others, 2008). These data are valuable for making decisions related to bridge design, floodplain delineation, water-supply, and sustaining stream quality and ecology.

The objective of the pilot project is to develop and implement the StreamStats application for the Upper French Broad River basin in western North Carolina utilizing the local resolution NHD product and 20-foot DEMs (derived from LIDAR), with the most current regional streamflow regression equations and datasets pertinent to the various cooperating agencies. Issues related to dataset development and application implementation that might affect stream mapping in North Carolina and(or) other areas of the country with similar resolution datasets will be addressed and documented such that subsequent implementations can be more efficient and cost-effective.

The North Carolina pilot StreamStats application for the upper French Broad River basin can be accessed from the USGS National StreamStats site at http://water.usgs.gov/osw/streamstats/north_carolina.html. This web site provides helpful information for the user, including definitions of basin characteristics, details about the functionality and limitations of the StreamStats application, user-help information regarding how to use StreamStats, and links to access state applications.