Data Discovery and Analysis in Hays County, TX

Locations of streamflow data in Hays County, Texas including Jacob's Well Spring and the Blanco River.

A comprehensive HydroDesktop data discovery and analysis exercise has been added to the HydroDesktop User Guide: Data Discovery and Analysis: The Hydrology of Jacob's Well Spring. This tutorial covers all the basics in HydroDesktop while examining the hydrology of Jacob's Well Spring and the Blanco River (Hays County, Texas); how to search for data in multiple ways, how to download data, how to visualize downloaded data, and how to export downloaded data. Additionally, this exercise includes an advanced section that utilizes the HydroR plugin to analyze mixing of surface and subsurface water sources.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

The HydroDesktop User Guide

As we prepare to release a new recommended version of HydroDesktop*, we have also been updating the User Guide, which is now available on this site. This User Guide contains six pages:

• User Guide Homepage - Contains information regarding distribution, copyright, and support in addition to a brief introduction of general concepts employed in HydroDesktop.
• Working with the Map - Contains information regarding navigation of the map in HydroDesktop.
• Searching for Data - Contains information about searching for data registered in the CUAHSI HIS.
• Working with Data - Contains information related to viewing and analyzing data in the HydroDesktop environment in addition to exporting the data to external file formats. 
• HydroR Plugin - Contains information describing the HydroR plugin for statistical analyses.
• Tutorials - Contains brief tutorials for searching for, downloading, and analyzing data in HydroDesktop.

In addition to the links above, the User Guide is also accessible via links on the top navigation bar and the side navigation bar of this website.

Stay tuned for the official release of the new version of HydroDesktop for 2013!

*If you'd like to preview the next version of HydroDesktop, download the latest experimental version here.

Spotlight On: Ipswich River Watershed Association

The Ipswich River watershed connects 21 Massachusetts communities. Image from IRWA.

The Ipswich River is located in Northeastern Massachusetts. With 45 miles of a meandering path from its source to the sea, the watershed of this river includes at least a part of 21 Massachusetts communities. Since 1997, volunteers from the Ipswich River Watershed Association's (IRWA) Riverwatch Program have collected data to record the conditions of the river.

The IRWA began publishing its data from the Riverwatch Program in HIS earlier this year in order to make the data more publicly accessible. This web service is unlike many of the web services registered with HIS Central because it is a citizens' group rather than academic researchers or a government agency that is publishing data. The variables being observed in this case are water temperature and dissolved oxygen.

There are 34 sites with observations along the Ipswich River in the IRWA web service, which can be seen in this screenshot from HydroDesktop.

The two aforementioned variables (water temperature and dissolved oxygen) are measured at 34 different sites along the Ipswich River, which can be seen in the above screenshot from HydroDesktop. The darkened polygon is the coverage of the Ipswich River watershed as delineated using the EPA Watershed Delineation Tool.

The IRWA web service is an excellent example of how HIS can enable data publication from a variety of sources. These sources are often government agencies or academic researchers, but examples such as the IRWA contribute to HIS being in a unique position as a one stop portal for water data.

For more on the Ipswich River, visit the IRWA website.