Stream stage, stream temperature, and climate metrics for 30 streams spanning land use and management gradients in the Maryland-Washington, DC-Virginia Developed Piedmont Region, 2024

This data release contains summary metrics describing stream stage, stream water temperature, and short-term climate conditions (daily precipitation and air temperature) for 30 streams spanning gradients of forest and developed land uses and the implementation of agricultural best management practices in the Piedmont region within Maryland, Washington, DC, and Virginia, USA. This setting is the fourth of four settings or "typologies" that will be assessed for the USGS Chesapeake Stream Team project. High-frequency stage, water temperature, and air temperature (15-minute data) were measured by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from March 2024 to September 2024 and are available at McFarland and others (2025; DOI: https://doi.org/10.5066/P13JW8QF). Additional daily air temperature and precipitation data were acquired from the Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) climate data website. Air temperature and water temperature data were used to compute stream water temperature metrics describing stream temperature conditions in each stream during the monitoring period. Stream stage and precipitation data were used to derive stream stage metrics describing stage conditions (a surrogate for flow) for each stream during the monitoring period. Precipitation and air temperature data from PRISM were also used to compute air temperature metrics and precipitation metrics describing climate conditions during the monitoring period.

The metrics include:

Air temperature metrics
- Mean daily minimum, mean, and maximum air temperature

Precipitation metrics
- Total precipitation depth - Maximum daily precipitation depth
- Average precipitation depth per days with precipitation
- Frequency of precipitation days

Stream stage metrics
- Number of runoff events
- Frequency of runoff events
- Standard deviation in unit-value stage

Stream water temperature metrics
- Coefficient of variation of mean and maximum daily water temperatures
- Number of days with temperatures of 20 or 25 degrees Celsius or greater
- Duration of time above 20 or 25 degrees Celsius or greater
- Maximum of seven-day moving average of daily maximum temperature and daily mean temperature
- Mean of daily minimum, mean, maximum, and daily water temperature range
- A thermal sensitivity metric, which is the slope estimate from linear regression model of mean daily water temperature versus mean daily air temperature

This data release contains six files:

1. "Readme.pdf": This is an expanded narrative describing the methods by which the input data were compiled and screened, and metrics were computed

2. "typology_4_temperature_stage_climate_metric_data_dictionary.csv": This file contains descriptions of each metric and the time periods for which they were computed in the “typology_4_temperature_stage_climate_summary_metrics.csv" file

3. "typology_4_temperature_stage_climate_summary_metrics.csv": This file contains stream temperature metrics, stage metrics, and climate summary metrics for each of the 30 stream sites for different time periods within the overall monitoring period

4. "typology_4_input_data_high_frequency_temperature_and_stage.zip": This zipped folder contains 30 .csv files, which contain the high-frequency stage, water temperature, and air temperature data collected at each of the 30 stream sites. The file names include the SiteID, which is the four-letter site identification listed in the "typology_3_temperature_stage_climate_summary_metrics.csv" file

5. "typology_4_input_data_daily_climate.csv": This file contains daily climate estimates (precipitation depth, daily minimum, mean, and maximum air temperatures) from PRISM paired to each of the 30 sites

6. "typology_4_runoff_events.csv": This file contains the stage rise and precipitation data used for some of the stage metric computations.