USGS Hydro-Climatic Data Network (HCDN-2009)

The U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Hydro-Climatic Data Network - 2009 (HCDN-2009) is an updated listing of streamgaging stations where discharge primarily reflects prevailing meteorological conditions. The stations have been screened to exclude those where human activities, such as artificial diversions, storage, and other activities in or near the stream channel, affect the natural flow of the watercourse. The purpose of the network is to provide a streamflow data set suitable for analyzing hydrologic variations and trends in a climatic context. HCDN-2009 is a subset of the USGS GAGES-II Reference stations.

A description of HCDN-2009 is provided in USGS Fact Sheet 2012-3047 (http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2012/3047/).

A complete list of stations comprising HCDN-2009, along with basic attributes is given in the Excel file HCDN-2009_Station_Info.xlsx.

The data for HCDN-2009 stations can be retrieved from the web interface for the National Water Information System (NWISWeb) at http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/sw.

The spatial attribute data associated with the GAGES-II stations (including HCDN-2009) is available at http://water.usgs.gov/GIS/metadata/usgswrd/XML/gagesII_Sept2011.xml and a full description of GAGES is published online at http://esapubs.org/Archive/ecol/E091/045/metadata.htm.