Geospatial Data For Streamflow Monitoring Network Design in Louisiana

This resource contains GIS layers necessary to reproduce the analysis of the paper "Stakeholder-Driven Design of a Flood Risk Streamflow Monitoring Network for Louisiana, USA" submitted to the Journal of American Water Resources Association (JAWRA). The analysis of this paper is focused on designing a streamflow gauge monitoring network as part of the Louisiana Watershed Initiative (LWI) program to enhance the hydrologic modeling and monitoring capabilities of the state of Louisiana. The monitoring network is optimized to capitalize on the resources made available by the LWI program while serving the needs of the local, regional, and federal stakeholders in Louisiana as much as possible. The factors taken into the optimization algorithm included the collected feedback from the stakeholders, as well as a variety of geospatial and geomorphic characteristics of the Louisiana stream network. The analysis also used the current and past conditions of stream monitoring (e.g., existing and discontinued USGS locations). A final set of 123 stream gauges were selected to be deployed. The shapefile containing this set of gauges is also included in this resource.