Daily summaries of stream temperature at sites in Alaska, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

Stream temperature is an important parameter to ecology, climate, and hydrology studies in Alaska. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) takes continuous stream temperature measurements at various sites around the state as part of the National Water Information Service (NWIS). Here the daily min, mean, and max temperature data (degrees C) at 116 stations across Alaska are included. Data are provided in site-level files, with an additional file describing site and station information. USGS generated flags indicating suspect data are also included in each site-level data file. The data was downloaded from USGS via the USGS R package ‘dataRetrieval’. Included in this data package is the R script, ‘USGS_StreamTemperature_Data_Download.R’, that was used to download this data. This package can be used to download similar data from the USGS data repository. The R script includes code that will save all data to one master file, split the files by site (as done here), as well as code that will save data by individual site number, if needed.