Estimation of monthly water yields and flows for 1951-2012 for the United States portion of the Great Lakes Basin with AFINCH

Abstract

Cover image. The United States portion of the Great Lakes Basin.

Measuring and evaluating ecological flows from streams to regions: Steps towards national coverage

“…() provide the rules for defining spatial units for a national framework (US Geological Survey (USGS), ); Luukkonen et al. () explain the AFINCH method for stream reach‐specific flow estimation; and we describe here how to classify lotic systems, predict flow sensitivity for species (or biodiversity) and populate the framework with those values at multiple spatial scales. This approach, illustrated here for the Great Lakes Region, may be replicated in other regions or nationwide, where stream networks have been georeferenced and size, temperature, flow and biotic metric data are available for the reaches.…”

“…ELOHA's Hydrologic Framework) is available via several modelling approaches. Here, we used AFINCH (Luukkonen et al., ), which improves over basic catchment regression models to estimate flow by (1) constraining reach flow estimates according to nearby actual gaged reaches; (2) conserving flow from upstream to downstream; and (3) accounting for major reach‐specific flow diversions or inputs. The AFINCH method provides monthly streamflow metrics which were appropriate for our needs.…”

“…Flow in lotic systems is naturally variable, the result of climate and landscape conditions, and is largely the sum of processes operating in multiple tributaries as one moves downstream (Luukkonen, Holtschlag, Reeves, Hoard, & Fuller, ; Poff et al., ). Streamgages provide critical data for understanding various aspects of natural flow regimes (e.g.…”

“…Uncertainty in AFINCH estimates was explored by Koltun and Holtschlag (), and for ungaged headwaters, the catchment‐based regressions were judged to be about 80% accurate (Hamilton & Seelbach, ). Time series of monthly streamflow from AFINCH were used to generate a wide array of flow metrics for each stream reach within the US Great Lakes Basin for the period from 1951 to 2012 (Luukkonen et al., ). For much of the analysis, estimated flow yield was used rather than estimated flow.…”

Working towards a more holistic set of hydrologic principles to teach nonhydrologists: Five simple concepts within catchment hydrology

“…The concept has been widely used in practice. A USGS model to estimate inflows from tributaries on the Great Lakes makes use of this principle to extrapolate gage streams to ungaged streams (Luukkonen, Holtschlag, Reeves, Hoard, & Fuller, 2015). Additionally, the numerous USGS reports that established the basis for StreamStats developed regression relationships in which the dominant explanatory variable is nearly always watershed area raised to a power near one (e.g., Dudley, 2015;Gotvald, 2017).…”