Hydrologic Statistics and Data Analysis (M1)

This resource contains a Jupyter Notebook that is used to introduce hydrologic data analysis and conservation laws. This resource is part of a HydroLearn Physical Hydrology learning module available at https://edx.hydrolearn.org/courses/course-v1:Utah_State_University+CEE6400+2019_Fall/about

In this activity, the student learns how to (1) calculate the residence time of water in land and rivers for the global hydrologic cycle; (2) quantify the relative and absolute uncertainties in components of the water balance; (3) navigate public websites and databases, extract key watershed attributes, and perform basic hydrologic data analysis for a watershed of interest; (4) assess, compare, and interpret hydrologic trends in the context of a specific watershed.

Please note that in problems 3-8, the user is asked to use an R package (i.e., dataRetrieval) and select a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) streamflow gage to retrieve streamflow data and then apply the hydrological data analysis to the watershed of interest. We acknowledge that the material relies on USGS data that are only available within the U.S. If running for other watersheds of interest outside the U.S. or wishing to work with other datasets, the user must take some further steps and develop codes to prepare the streamflow dataset. Once a streamflow time series dataset is obtained for an international catchment of interest, the user would need to read that file into the workspace before working through subsequent analyses.