getUSGSflow function

Retrieve USGS daily flow data in a wide format

Retrieve USGS daily flow data from NWIS based on list of site IDs (relying on dataRetrieval::readNWISdv and dataRetrieval::renameNWISColumns. The flow and data qualifier code for each site is organized into two columns (e.g., "q10174500", "q101745000cd" for USGS gage 10174500). Flow is stored as cubic meters per second [cms].

getUSGSflow(
  siteNumber,
  yearStart,
  yearEnd,
  fill = TRUE,
  span = 10,
  max.fill = 10
)

Arguments

• siteNumber: List of site numbers
• yearStart: Beginning year of data retrieval
• yearEnd: Ending year of data retrieval
• fill: TRUE[default]/FALSE field indicating whether to fill in missing values using with USGS' fillMissing function
• span: the maximum number of observations on each side of each range of missing values to use in constructing the time series model [default=10]
• max.fill: the maximum gap to fill [default=10]

Returns

USGS daily flow data for sites in a wide format

Details

This function automatically 'fills in' missing values [unless the user turns this feature off] using code developed by USGS (see smwrBase::fillMissing). The user can also control the maximum gap size to fill in. If a daily flow value is missing, then the corresponding data qualifier fields is set to 'NaN'. The user can use this setting to identify which flows are filled in.

Examples

# set retrieval parameters
yearStart   <- 2014
yearEnd     <- 2014
siteNumber <- c('01578310')

# regular retrieval (default usage)
df <- getUSGSflow(siteNumber, yearStart, yearEnd)