Housatonic River watershed hydraulic models and supplementary data for stream crossings in Massachusetts

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP), developed one-dimensional U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Hydrologic Engineering Center’s River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) hydraulic models for stream crossing sites in the Housatonic River watershed, Massachusetts. An automated Geographic Information System (GIS) hydraulic model tool was developed to derive model input data from Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) Digital Elevation Models (DEM) at each stream crossing location. These hydraulic models were used to develop preliminary designs for three culvert types—a 3-sided box, a 3-sided arch, and a pipe culvert—to convey the 10-, 4-, 2-, and 1-percent annual exceedance probability (AEP) (10-, 25-, 50-, and 100-year recurrence interval, respectively) flood flows and to meet the Massachusetts Stream Crossing Standards (SCS).

This data release contains hydraulic modeling data and supplemental geospatial data for selected stream crossing sites in the Housatonic River watershed in Massachusetts. Additionally, these preliminary culvert designs and selected data are hosted on the USGS StreamStats web application (https://streamstats.usgs.gov/ss/) for Massachusetts.