USGS Online Stream Flow Archive Offers Instantaneous Access

November 14, 2007 -- Access to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) historical instantaneous streamflow discharge data is now easily available online through the Instantaneous Data Archive (IDA) website. In this new system users will find streamflow information reported at the time intervals at which it is collected, typically 15 minute to hourly intervals. Stations available on this web site will typically have data starting in the late 1980s.

The USGS has provided historical daily streamflow data on the Internet for more than a decade, but for many scientific and engineering purposes it is very useful to have the historical data in shorter time increments. The instantaneous data has been available for many years, but was not accessible through the web. This new database saves time and effort by giving users the information through a user-friendly automated process.

"A user-friendly archive of historical instantaneous streamflow data are important to many different users for such things as floodplain mapping, flood modeling, and estimating pollutant transport." said Robert Hirsch, USGS Associate Director of Water.

The IDA web site currently has about 1.5 billion instantaneous data values from 5,500 streamgages in 26 states. Not all states and streamgages are available at this time. A map of the U.S. indicating the sates for which instantaneous data is available may be accessed at http://ida.water.usgs.gov/ida/view_status.cfm. The number of states and streamgages with data will continue to increase in the future.