USGS US Water-Resources Cataloging Units (WRCU)

USGS US Water-Resources Cataloging Units (WRCU) for the US Water Regions Flow data are used in P-ROUTE to represent stream characteristic. The WRCU is based on U.S. Geological Survey's national digital data bases compiled from state site-specific data.   This means you should know exact catalog unit number corresponding to a specific site of your interest to simulate P-ROUTE using flow databases. All catalog units are expressed in 8-digit numerical values. Here's a brief description of how to find, and define catalog unit numbers for the P-ROUTE simulation. Structure of Water-Resources Cataloging Units (WRCU)   Let's start from an actual WRCU example. A flow characteristic data of a site in Mid Atlantic Region, locate in the subregion of the Lower Chesapeake, in the second accounting unit with geographic description with Hampton Roads is assigned to a WRCU as 02080208       Hampton Roads Huh? Well, 02080208 is the WRCU, and Hampton Roads is the description of a specific site assigned to the WRCU. The encryptic 8-digit WRCU is based on a combination of 02 08 02 08 02 0208 020802 02080208 water-resources region(2-digit water-basin code) water-resources subregion (4-digit water-basin code) water-resources accounting unit (6-digit water-basin code) water-resources cataloging unit (8-digit water-basin code) Water-Resources Region   There are 21 water-resources regions in the U.S. as shown below. List of water-resource regions 01 New England Region 02 Mid Atlantic Region 03 South Atlantic-Gulf Region 04 Great Lakes Region 05 Ohio Region 06 Tennessee Region 07 Upper Mississippi Region 08 Lower Mississippi Region 09 Souris-Red-Rainy Region 10 Missouri Region 11 Arkansas-White-Red Region 12 Texas-Gulf Region 13 Rio Grande Region 14 Upper Colorado Region 15 Lower Colorado Region 16 Great Basin Region 17 Pacific Northwest Region 18 California Region 19 Alaska Region 20 Hawaii Region 21 Caribbean Region Two things you should keep in mind regarding to above Water-Resources Region list; Water-Resources Regions are based on the hydrologic unit, not by the state boundary. For example, the State of Virginia is covered by four different Water-Resources Regions, 02, 03, 05, and 06. Please take a look at the Water-Resources Regions map below. P-ROUTE distribution does NOT include Flow data database files for Water-Resources Regions 19, 20, and 21 (Alaska, Hawaii and Caribbean Regions). Water-Resources Subregion   Water-resources subregions in each state. Note that in any state, the data pertains to only that portion of the subregion that is within the state boundaries. List of 4-digits all U.S. water-resource subregions are available from this website. All U.S. water-resource subregions Water-Resources Cataloging Unit   This 8-digit Water-resources cataloging unit is the flow characteristic data of a site belongs to a water-resources accounting unit in a subregion that is a part of one of 21 USGS US water-resources region. It now starts making a sense (based on the hierarchical cataloging unit assignment) that the WRCU approach could gurantee uniqueness of a specific site flow characteristic record, at the same time, it becomes much easier to handle massive amounts of countinuous field measurement records thru the WRCU assignment. (actually, I strongly suspect that the WRCU schema must be designed by a SQL/RDBMS-oriented person for the sake of making his/her life less stressful from tons of field measurement data) Site-specific WRCU(s) for P-ROUTE simulation   For P-ROUTE simulation, you can find site-specific WRCU(s) by Find the region number corresponding to your study site from the Water-resources region map or from the list based on the geographical location of your site, determine a corresponding the Water-resources subregion number starting with the region number and its description If you found 4-digit number(s) (region+subregion), then it's relatively easy to find out final WRCU(s) for channel reaches of your study site by comparing the description of WRCUs that starts with the same first 4-digit number. WRCU for Virginia and its adjacent states are available from this website as below. WRCU for VA/Virginia WRCU for MD/Maryland WRCU for WV/West Virginia WRCU for NC/North Carolina   Full 8-digit WRCU databases for the rest of 12 Water-resources regions are downloadable from the USGS Website   Back to WRR and WRCU section of P-ROUTE page     Download PDF Reader     Instruction for copying computer models bigger than 1.44 MB to multiple floppy disks