Hydrologic Data Lab

The goal of this lab is to familiarize you with USGS hydrologic data. Go to their data website, retrieve some data for your favorite river (this will be turned in), and answer the following questions. It may also help if you look for some satellite or aerial imagery of the river and of course a topo map. I haven't had luck getting precipitation data from that site, so try wunderground for that.

1. Which river did you choose?
2. What is the drainage area of the river?
3. What is the relief of the basin?
4. What is the average slope of the basin?
5. What is the annual range of flow volumes for this river? Is it a large or a small river?
6. What is the base flow of the river?
7. Is the flow of the river episodic (are there short peaks in the data) or is the flow smoothly varying (seasonal changes but no short peaks)?
8. In what form is the river receiving precipitation? I.e. rain or snow? How does that affect the hydrology?
9. What is the response time to a high-precipitation event (try to find a rain event)? I.e. what is the lag between the maximum precip and the maximum flood?
10. What is the shape of the response curve? Is it a sharp peak or a gradual increase and decrease?
11. From the hydrologic data, can you say anything about how much soil or how much vegetation is on the landscape?
12. Can you determine the discharge of a 25-year flood from your data? How about the typical annual maximum discharge?
13. Qualitatively, how much sediment do you think is being transported by the river at different times of year? Are the annual floods transporting more than the big 25 or 100-year floods?