Russian River Integrated Hydrologic Model (RRIHM): Groundwater & Streamflow Observations

The Russian River Watershed (RRW) covers about 1300 square miles (without Santa Rosa Plain) of urban, agricultural, and forested lands in northern Sonoma County and southern Mendocino County, California. Communities in the RRW depend on a combination of Russian River water and groundwater to meet their water-supply demands. Water is used primarily for agricultural irrigation, municipal and private wells supply, and commercial uses - such as for wineries and recreation. Annual rainfall in the RRW is highly variable, making it prone to droughts and flooding from atmospheric river events. In order to better understand surface-water and groundwater issues, the USGS is creating a Coupled Ground-Water and Surface-Water Flow Model (GSFLOW; Markstrom and others, 2008) of the RRW. This model will include climate, geology, surface-water, groundwater, and land-use data.

This data release contains 2 shapefiles used in the Russian River Integrated Hydrologic Model (RRIHM). These shapefiles are: 1) groundwater wells (with measured ground water levels), and 2) streamflow gages. It also includes a comma separated values (CSV) file of measured daily streamflow (in cubic feet per second).