[Sound Effect]
[Music]
Darwin: One of the important uses of streamflow data is to assess the availability of surface
water in a river basin.
Streamflow data are also used for flood forecasting or flood warning, we use the data to help
design hydraulic structures such as bridges or to delineate floodplains, scientist use
the data to help understand the ecological needs of rivers and waterbodies, even recreational
users depend upon the streamflow data to understand the conditions on the river.
Ian: Continuous stream flow monitoring is the practice of collecting stream flow date
or stream flow measurements at a very constant interval, roughly every 15 minutes or less.
So that gives us a full record of a streamflow that has passed a given point in a river over
a long period of time.
It lets us collect a record of total flow over a day, a week, a month a year.
Brandon: USGS treats streamflow as if it is the pulse of our ecosystem.
We’re collecting long term data at many, many sites that we can use.
We focus on collecting the most accurate and up-to-date streamflow information at as many
sites that we can.
Darwin: A typical streamflow gaging station includes: instruments to measure the water
level, it could be a pressure transducer, it could be a float in a stilling well that
moves up and down as the river changes levels, it could be an acoustic radar device mounted
under a bridge. To measure streamflow discharge, the cubic feet per second,
that’s flowing by the river, then we need to go out and we
actually measure the depth and the velocity of the river at intervals along a cross section.
So that means to operate a gaging station we have to continually go out and make these
periodic measurements of discharge.
Ian: The cost of installing, operating and maintaining continuous monitoring station
applies everywhere.
Maintaining a good record of continuous streamflow in remote areas or area where they have really
flashy streams, stream that go dry for part of the year and then have high flows during
a flood season or during a monsoon season, those can be some of the toughest and most
expensive.
Brandon: We have to send our people out on very long trips and it can be quite costly
because a lot of the time it requires complicated transportation including helicopters and or
long hikes even with pack animals in some cases, so to have systems set up at sites like this
that can accurately measure streamflow without the need for as much human interaction would
significantly lower the cost for those two particular instances.
John: Many types of waterways could benefit from lower cost streamflow monitoring: streams
that experience moving silt beds or sand beds, aquatic vegetation or ephemeral inflows are
all challenging environments to gage.
Ian: What we really need to focus on for this Prize Competition is reducing the cost.
We want to maintain the accuracy, we want to maintain the reliability but we need to
reduce the cost.
Brandon: Where I see innovation for this competition is somebody being able to integrate multiple
types of approach at one particular gage for the same kind of cost.
Darwin: Some stations have record for over 100 years, so when you lose a gaging station,
you’re not just losing the information at a particular location but you’re losing
part of a network.
Brandon: It’s exciting that USGS and the Bureau of Reclamation are partnering on this
project because at USGS we strive to collect the best, most accurate and largest streamflow
network of data in the country and the Bureau of Reclamation for the vast majority of projects
that they manage require accurate, real time streamflow information
Ian: The better and cheaper our streamflow monitoring is, the better data we have to
work with, to plan and manage our water resources systems, to predict and react to flood events
and drought events and to manage our water resources more efficiently.
So we’re hoping that folks who are out there from other fields with other interest are
going to be able to take their ideas and apply it to our problem and come up with new solutions
that help us reduce the cost of continuous streamflow monitoring
[Music and water flow sounds]