Summary of basin characteristics for National Hydrography Dataset, version 2 catchments in the southeastern United States, 1950 - 2010

This dataset provides numerical and categorical descriptions of 46 basin characteristics for 957 basins with observed streamflow information and 9,314 ungaged basins coinciding with 12-digit hydrologic unit code pour points that drain to the Gulf of Mexico. Characteristics are indexed by National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) version 2 COMID and USGS site number (streamflow-gaging station), where applicable. The variables represent mutable and immutable basin characteristics and are organized by characteristic type: physical (5), hydrologic (6), categorical (12), climate (6), landscape alteration (7), and land cover (12). Mutable characteristics such as climate, land cover, and landscape alteration variables are reported in decadal increments (for example, average percent forest for the decade 1950-1959, 1960-1969, etc). The majority of basin characteristics in this dataset were calculated using divergence-routing methods and are often referred to as 'network-accumulated'. This method uses a modified routing database to navigate the NHDPlus reach network to aggregate (accumulate) the values derived from the reach catchment scale (Schwarz and Wieczorek, 2016). In four instances, values are also provided for the entire catchment above a site and area designated using the "CAT_" prefix.