Title:

Modeled flow metrics for stream segments in the United States under historical conditions and projected climate change scenarios

Author(s):

Luce, Charles H.; Walker, Nathan J.; Johnson, Erik W.

Publication Year:

2025

How to Cite:

These data were collected using funding from the U.S. Government and can be used without additional permissions or fees. If you use these data in a publication, presentation, or other research product please use the following citation:

Luce, Charles H.; Walker, Nathan J.; Johnson, Erik W. 2025. Modeled flow metrics for stream segments in the United States under historical conditions and projected climate change scenarios. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2025-0018


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The following acknowledgement statement should be included in the metadata for any derived data products:

We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (listed below) for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP, the U.S. Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.

- Least warm: MRI-CGCM3 (Meteorological Research Institute)
- Hot: HadGEM2-ES (Met Office Hadley Centre / Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais)
- Dry: IPSL-CM5A-MR (Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace)
- Wet: CNRM-CM5 (Centre National de Recherches Meteorologiques / Centre Europeen de Recherche et Formation Avancees en Calcul Scientifique)
- Middle: NorESM1-M (Norwegian Climate Centre)

Abstract:

These files represent modeled streamflow across the contiguous United States, for the historical period (1977–2006), and two projected future time periods, mid-century (2030–2059), and end-of-century (2070–2099), based on gridded simulations of daily total runoff. The flow regime is of fundamental importance in determining the physical and ecological characteristics of a river or stream, but actual flow measurements are only available for a small minority of stream segments, mostly on large rivers. Flows for all other streams must be extrapolated or modeled. Modeling is also necessary to estimate flow regimes under future climate conditions. These use RCP 8.5 projections of temperature and precipitation, downscaled to a 1/8 degree (approximately 12 kilometers) cell size, which are used as inputs to the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) macroscale hydrologic model. For each stream segment in the National Hydrography Dataset Plus Version 2 (NHDPlusV2) in the contiguous U.S. we calculated hydrographs for the three time periods. From these we calculated summary flow metrics to describe flow regimes for each stream segment and each time period and joined these to the NHD stream segments for visualization and analysis. These results allow scientists and managers to easily compare historical and projected flow patterns, including monthly, seasonal, and annual flow, flood and drought events, and timing of peak and low flows. This data publication includes the following three geodatabases: 1) flow metrics for all time periods, NHD regions, and models, merged, projected, and cleaned, for the 5-model average results; 2) individual streamflow metric files for each time period, absolute change between them, and percent change between them, for the 5-model average results; and 3) individual streamflow metric files for each time period, absolute change between them, and percent change between them, for each of 5 climate models.

Keywords:

environment; inlandWaters; geoscientificInformation; Climate change; Ecology, Ecosystems, & Environment; Natural Resource Management & Use; Water; Hydrology, watersheds, sedimentation; hydrology; streams; variable infiltration capacity; VIC; national hydrography dataset; NHD; water; streamflow; climate change; climate; historical; future; contiguous United States

Related publications:

• Wenger, Seth J.; Luce, Charles H.; Hamlet, Alan F.; Isaak, Daniel J.; Neville, Helem M. 2010. Macroscale hydrologic modeling of ecologically relevant flow metrics. Water Resources Research. 46(9): W09513. https://doi.org/10.1029/2009WR008839 https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/36238
• USDA Forest Service. 2022. Hydro flow metrics for the contiguous United States. USDA Forest Service, Chief Information Office, Enterprise Data Warehouse (FSGeodata Clearinghouse). https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/edw/datasets.php?xmlKeyword=hydro+flow+metrics

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  • RDS-2025-0018_Data2_FM_by_TimePeriod.zip (6.77 GB; Checksum)
  • RDS-2025-0018_Data3_FM_CGMs.zip (16.7 GB; Checksum)

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