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Colorado Water Science Center
Home
Welcome to the USGS Colorado Water Science Center web site! Please use these pages to explore the hydrologic data and scientific investigations we conduct on Colorado water resources.
Current Water Conditions
Explore real-time Colorado streamflow, groundwater, and water-quality conditions and access data with an interactive map application.
Current Water ConditionsScience Highlight
To better characterize the water supply capacity of Clear Creek Reservoir, a bathymetry survey was conducted. The methods used allowed water-resource managers to maintain typical reservoir operations and eliminate the need to empty the reservoir.
Learn moreNews
Big Thompson Floods of 1976 and 2013 - A Visual Comparison
The Big Thompson Floods of 1976 and 2013 shown visually. The inundation images reflect the location and peak streamflows at certain points between Estes Park and Loveland, Colorado.
Media Advisory: Witness Groundbreaking River Measurements Collected from the Sky
This Thursday, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA will test new technologies near Parkdale, Colorado, located west of Cañon City, to better understand how unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or drones, may be used to measure water depth, water levels and velocity from the sky.
Hundreds of Biological Data Available for Fountain Creek Basin, Colorado
The U.S. Geological Survey just added more than 800 fish and macroinvertebrate data samples from Fountain Creek, Colorado, to the USGS BioData Retrieval system.
Publications
Real-time streambed scour monitoring at two bridges over the Gunnison River in western Colorado, 2016–17
The Colorado Department of Transportation maintains roadways crossing over large streams and rivers where sediment transport and channel alignment changes can affect the structural stability of bridges. Structural stability during and immediately after peak streamflow can be assessed by measuring streambed scour; however, placing personnel or...
Henneberg, Mark F.
Quantifying uncertainty in simulated streamflow and runoff from a continental-scale monthly water balance model
One important component of continental-scale hydrologic modeling is quantifying the level of uncertainty in long-term hydrologic simulations and providing a range of possible simulated streamflow and/or runoff values for gaged and ungaged locations. In this paper, uncertainty was quantified for simulated streamflow and runoff generated from a...
Bock, Andrew R.; Farmer, William H.; Hay, Lauren E. Geometric versus anemometric surface roughness for a shallow accumulating snowpack
When applied to a snow-covered surface, aerodynamic roughness length, z0, is typically considered as a static parameter within energy balance equations. However, field observations show that z0 changes spatially and temporally, and thus z0 incorporated as a dynamic parameter may greatly improve models. To evaluate methods...
Sanow, Jessica E.; Fassnacht, Steven R.; Kamin, David J.; Sexstone, Graham A.; Bauerle, William L.; Oprea, Iuliana