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Annual peak-flow data and results of flood-frequency analysis for 76 selected streamflow gaging stations operated by the U.S. Geological Survey in the upper White River basin, Missouri and Arkansas, computed using an updated generalized (regional) flood skew

Metadata Updated: December 10, 2025

This dataset contains site information, basin characteristics, results of flood-frequency analysis, and a generalized (regional) flood skew for 76 selected streamgages operated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in the upper White River basin (4-digit hydrologic unit 1101) in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. The Little Rock District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) needed updated estimates of streamflows corresponding to selected annual exceedance probabilities (AEPs) and a basin-specific regional flood skew. USGS selected 111 candidate streamgages in the study area that had 20 or more years of gaged annual peak-flow data available through the 2020 water year. After screening for regulation, urbanization, redundant/nested basins, drainage areas greater than 2,500 square miles, and streamgage basins located in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (8-digit hydrologic unit 11010013), 77 candidate streamgages remained. After conducting the initial flood-frequency analysis to generate at-site (station) skew and its mean squared error (MSE) for development of the regional flood skew, four streamgages with less than 20 years of pseudo effective record length (PRL) and two streamgages with an excessive amount of censored annual peak flows were removed, leaving 71 streamgages (44 in Arkansas and 27 in Missouri) for use in the study. Flood-frequency analysis was done using the Expected Moments Algorithm (EMA) in version 7.3 of USGS software PeakFQ (Veilleux and others, 2014; England and others, 2019). Ten basin characteristics were tested as explanatory variables in a generalized additive model (GAM) of flood skew, but a lack of statistical significance of the variables, including two-dimensional smooths of the locations of the streamgages and the centroids of their basins, indicated that a weighted mean flood skew of -0.132, with a mean squared error of 0.160 and standard error of 0.400, was appropriate. The regional flood skew agrees well with regional flood skew previously developed for Arkansas and Louisiana(skew -0.17, MSE 0.12) using Bayesian generalized least-squares (B-GLS) regression and most of the streamgages in this study (Wagner and others, 2016, appendix 1). The regional flood skew was incorporated in a final flood-frequency analysis in PeakFQ software using a weighted skew (England and others, 2019). In addition to the 71 streamgages used to develop the regional flood skew, five active streamgages that were screened for redundancy (four in Missouri and one in Arkansas) were included in the final flood-frequency analysis. The final estimates of streamflows corresponding to the selected AEPs (0.5, 0.2, 0.1, 0.04, 0.02, 0.01, and 0.002) were weighted with estimates of the same AEPs computed using regional regression equations (Southard and Veilleux, 2014; Wagner and others, 2016) to generate the final weighted estimates, their variances, and 95-percent confidence intervals.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 12, 2025
Metadata Updated Date December 10, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 12, 2025
Metadata Updated Date December 10, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-60c01ba3d34e86b938921612
Data Last Modified 2021-09-07T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 83c03a93-aa55-46e5-a365-95671e5c890d
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 11e5aa7a9f9509dea585b55970390c764b1b2a930e909037b3116a4ac0534019
Source Schema Version 1.1

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