A simple water budget includes precipitation, streamflow, change in storage, evapotranspiration, and residuals: P=Q + ET + ΔS + e. It is essential to include the managed component (i.e., the “human” component) to close the water budget and reduce the magnitude of the residuals from “natural” water budgets. Some of the largest components of managed water withdraws are public supply, irrigation, and thermoelectric. The modified water budget is: P=Q + ET + ΔS + (PS + Irr + TE) + e, where PS is public supply, Irr is irrigation, and TE is thermoelectric water use. This data release contains both the natural and managed components of the water budget for a region within the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin, GA, U.S. The natural components include precipitation, evapotranspiration, and discharge and the managed components include public supply, irrigation, and thermoelectric.
This table contains HUC 10 IDs, the natural components of the water budget, and two estimates of the managed components for only the year 2010: (1) water-use data downscaled from counties to HUC 10s and (2) water-use data aggregated from sites to HUC 10s. The county-level data is downloaded directly from the USGS 5-year compilation while the site-specific data is derived from various sources (see further description in the readme).