Abstract

Methodology to Generalize the National Hydrography Dataset Using Environmental Data
Track: Water Resources
Authors: Michael Tinker

The USGS' National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) is a geospatial dataset of all surface streams in the United States at multiple scales. The NHD represents a flowline network for streams within nested hydrologic units. The EPA's NHDPlus adds value to the NHD by including stream flow volume, in cubic feet per second (cfs), for all stream reaches. In the last decade, several researchers have explored techniques to generalize the NHD flowlines to multiple smaller scales. Many of these techniques rely on mathematical methods to generalize the flowlines based on drainage area or flowline length. A new technique explores a method to generalize the NHD to 1:10M-scale based on environmental data, using the flow rates for stream reaches in the NHDPlus and mean precipitation for each catchment. This method allows for hydrographically accurate maps based on actual climatology, as well as maps modeling future stream flows based on climate change precipitation models.