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Download and read a river water-level file

Source: R/river.R
dod.river.Rd

If saveFile is TRUE, then the file is saved for later use. Its first line will be a header. A column named "Date" may be decoded into a POSIX time value using lubridate::ymd_hms().

Usage

dod.river(
  id = "01EJ001",
  region = "NS",
  interval = "daily",
  saveFile = FALSE,
  debug = 0
)

Arguments

id

character value indicating the ID of the desired station. This may be discovered by using dod.river.index() first. This defaults to "01EJ001", for the Sackville River at Bedford.

region

character value indicating the province or territory in which the river gauge is sited. This defaults to "NS.

interval

character value, either "daily" or `"hourly", indicating the time interval desired. (The first seems to yield data in the current month, and the second seems to yield data since over the last 1 or 2 days.)

saveFile

logical value indicating whether to save the file for later use. This can be handy because the server does provide archived data. The filename will be as on the server, but with the main part of the filename ending with a timestamp. This file name is printed during processing, and it may be read later with read.csv(), with its time column being decoded with lubridate::ymd_hms(); perhaps the server has information on the meanings of the other columns, or perhaps you will be able to guess.

debug

integer indicating the level of debugging information that is printed during processing. The default, debug=0, means to work quietly.

Value

a data frame containing the data, with columns named "time" and "level" (m), "grade" and "discharge" (m^3/s). (Note that files contain other columns; if you want them, save the file and read it as explained in ‘Details’.)

References

Gore, James A., and James Banning. “Chapter 3 - Discharge Measurements and Streamflow Analysis.” In Methods in Stream Ecology, Volume 1 (Third Edition), edited by F. Richard Hauer and Gary A. Lamberti, 49–70. Boston: Academic Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-416558-8.00003-2.

Author

Dan Kelley

Examples

library(oce)
#> Loading required package: gsw
library(dod)
dir <- dod.river.index() # defaults to Sackville River at Bedford
data <- dod.river(id = dir$id)

# Plot a 3-panel summary graph; see e.g. Gore and Banning (2017) for more
# information on discharge.

layout(matrix(c(1, 3, 2, 3), 2, 2, byrow = TRUE), width = c(0.6, 0.4))
oce.plot.ts(data$time, data$level,
    xaxs = "i",
    xlab = "", ylab = "Level [m]",
    drawTimeRange = FALSE, grid = TRUE
)
mtext(sprintf("%s (%.4fN %.4fE)", dir$name, dir$latitude, dir$longitude),
    line = 0.2, cex = 0.7 * par("cex")
)
oce.plot.ts(data$time, data$discharge,
    xaxs = "i",
    xlab = "", ylab = expression("Discharge [" * m^3 / s * "]"),
    drawTimeRange = FALSE, grid = TRUE
)
plot(data$discharge, data$level,
    type = "l",
    xlab = expression("Discharge [" * m^3 / s * "]"), ylab = "Level [m]"
)