This zip file contains basin characteristics for stream gages that are part of "GAGES II" (an acronym for Geospatial Attributes of Gages for Evaluating Streamflow, version II).


GAGES II is an update to the original GAGES, which was published as a Data Paper on the journal Ecology's website (Falcone and others, 2010, http://esapubs.org/Archive/ecol/E091/045/default.htm; click "Metadata" when you get there for the report). Although the overall methodology did not change, there are a number of additions and improvements, both major and minor. The most significant improvements and changes are provided in the "What's New" section of the .docx file in this directory.


The zip file basinchar_and_report_sept_2011.zip contains the following files:

  - the Word document gagesII_sept30_2011_report.docx.  This is the report describing the update.

  - the spreadsheet gagesII_sept30_2011_conterm.xlsx contains the basin characteristics for the gages in the conterminous US.

  - the spreadsheet gagesII_sept30_2011_AKHIPR.xlsx contains the basin characteristics for the gages in Alaska-Hawaii-Puerto Rico. This is in the same format as the maindata spreadsheet, but contains fewer worksheets and variables, because only a subset of variables were comparable and readily calculatable for those areas.

  - the spreadsheet gagesII_sept30_2011_var_desc.xlsx contains the variable descriptions for all the variables in the data spreadsheets.

  - the zip file spreadsheets-in-csv-format.zip.  This contains all the above data and variable descriptions in comma-separated text files, for any users who may not have access to MS Excel.