NWCEd

Purpose and Content Overview

The purpose of the NWCEd package is to introduce users to the tools and functionalities of the National Water Census Data Portal (NWC-DP). The materials found in the package include custom functions, which allow the user to download hydrologic datasets and HUC information from the NWC-DP. The materials also include a series of stand-alone labs which instruct users on how to download and analyze NWC-DP datasets numerically and graphically in R. It is recommended that the labs be used as supplemental material in hydroscience courses at the college level.

Getting Started

Step 1

Install and load devtools package in your environment.

install.packages("devtools")
library(devtools)

Step 2

Install and load NWCEd package in your environment.

install_github("NWCEd/NWCEd")
library(NWCEd)

Step 3

Install and load the following packages to run in the respective labs using the same process as Step 1.

Lab #	Additional Required Packages
Lab 3	"datasets" "ggplot2" "gridExtra" "psych"
Lab 4	"dplyr" "ggplot2" "leaflet" "scales" "stats"
Lab 5	"foreach" "ggplot2" "iterators"

Learning Objectives

Below is a table which lists the learning objectives for the the lab materials as a whole. Individual labs may not meet all the learning objectives. For material description, please see the Materials Description table below.

Learning Objective	Objective Description
Access	Learn how to access hydrologic data and associated metatdata from the NWC-DP
Analyze	Learn how to analyze NWC-DP data using numerical and graphical methods in R
communicate	Practice how to communicate analysis through the use of graphs

Materials Description

The description of each of the lab materials is provided in the table below as well as a link to each of the respective labs.

Lab #	Material Description	Link
Lab 1	Accessing the NWC-DP NWC-DP water Budget tool Introduction to HUC's	Lab 1
Lab 2	Accessing the NWC-DP NWC-DP Streamflow Stats tool Downloading stats results	Lab 2
Lab 3	Accessing ET/ precipitation data from NWC-DP Analyzing and plotting box plots, histograms, and density curve plots in R Writing exercises	Lab 3
Lab 4	Analyzing time series and bar plots in R using NWC-DP data Water balances Double-mass curve analysis	Lab 4
Lab 5	Using a Log Pearson Type III model to analyze NWC-DP data in Excel Using a Log Pearson Type III model to analyze NWC-DP data in R	Lab 5

Function Names and Descriptions

Function Name	Function Description
getNWCData()	Downloads hydrologic datasets associated with a user-specified HUC ID
getNWCWatershed()	Downloads HUC spacial data for user selected HUC ID
annualize()	Converts daily time series datasets to annual time series datasets
getNWISSite()	Verifies the information exists for user-selected NWIS gage
getSWECSVBlock()	Accepts a url and returns a data frame of data for that SOS request
Lp3	Accepts a variable containing a NWC-DP dataset, applies a Log-Pearson Type III distribution, and returns a plot

Additional Reading Links

Double-Mass Curves
Statistical Methods in Water Resources
Daymet Model
CIDA USGS THREDDS Data Server
Log-Pearson Type III Distribution

Package Status

This package is considered a 'support' package. For more information, see: https://owi.usgs.gov/R/packages.html#support

Disclaimer

This software is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the U.S. Geological Survey, an agency of the United States Department of Interior. For more information, see the official USGS copyright policy at https://www.usgs.gov/visual-id/credit_usgs.html#copyright

Although this software program has been used by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), no warranty, expressed or implied, is made by the USGS or the U.S. Government as to the accuracy and functioning of the program and related program material nor shall the fact of distribution constitute any such warranty, and no responsibility is assumed by the USGS in connection therewith.

This software is provided "AS IS."