Local water year values for the conterminous United States

Abstract

Quantifying and predicting precipitation and water flow and their influences is challenged by the dynamic relationships between and timing of precipitation and water fluxes. To help with these challenges, scientists use “water year” to examine and predict the impacts of precipitation and relevant extreme climatic and hydrological events on ecosystems. However, traditional water year definitions used in the US lack a consideration of areal variation in climate and hydrology, which is needed when studying ecosystems at regional or national scales. We developed local water year (LWY) values that consider spatial variation using existing definitions whereby the water year begins in the month with the lowest or highest average monthly streamflow. We employed spatial interpolation to assign LWY start and end months to 202 subregions across the conterminous United States that range from 4,384 to 134,755 km². This dataset can be linked with diverse climate, terrestrial, and aquatic data for broad-scale studies.