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USGS US Water-Resources Cataloging Units (WRCU) for the US Water Regions Flow data are used in P-ROUTE to represent stream characteristic. The WRCU is based on U.S. Geological Survey's national digital data bases compiled from state site-specific data.

  This means you should know exact catalog unit number corresponding to a specific site of your interest to simulate P-ROUTE using flow databases.

All catalog units are expressed in 8-digit numerical values. Here's a brief description of how to find, and define catalog unit numbers for the P-ROUTE simulation. 





 Structure of Water-Resources Cataloging Units (WRCU) 







 
Let's start from an actual WRCU example. A flow characteristic data of a site in Mid Atlantic Region, locate in the subregion of the Lower Chesapeake, in the second accounting unit with geographic description with Hampton Roads is assigned to a WRCU as 



02080208       Hampton Roads 


Huh? Well, 02080208 is the WRCU, and Hampton Roads is the description of a specific site assigned to the WRCU. The encryptic 8-digit WRCU is based on a combination of 






02
08
02
08


02
0208
020802
02080208



water-resources region(2-digit water-basin code)
water-resources subregion
(4-digit water-basin code)		
water-resources accounting unit (6-digit water-basin code)
water-resources cataloging unit (8-digit water-basin code)





 Water-Resources Region 







 
There are 21 water-resources regions in the U.S. as shown below. 

List of water-resource regions 









01 

New England Region 

02 

Mid Atlantic Region 

03 

South Atlantic-Gulf Region 

04 

Great Lakes Region 

05 

Ohio Region 

06 

Tennessee Region 

07 

Upper Mississippi Region 

08 

Lower Mississippi Region 

09 

Souris-Red-Rainy Region 

10 

Missouri Region 

11 

Arkansas-White-Red Region 

12 

Texas-Gulf Region 

13 

Rio Grande Region 

14 

Upper Colorado Region 

15 

Lower Colorado Region 

16 

Great Basin Region 

17 

Pacific Northwest Region 

18 

California Region 

19 

Alaska Region 

20 

Hawaii Region 

21 

Caribbean Region 


Two things you should keep in mind regarding to above Water-Resources Region list; 



    

  1. Water-Resources Regions are based on the hydrologic unit, not by the state boundary. For example, the State of Virginia is covered by four different Water-Resources Regions, 02, 03, 05, and 06. Please take a look at the Water-Resources Regions map below. 

    files for Water-Resources Regions 19, 20, and 21 (Alaska, Hawaii and Caribbean Regions). 




 





 Water-Resources Subregion 







 
Water-resources subregions in each state. Note that in any state, the data pertains to only that portion of the subregion that is within the state boundaries. 

List of 4-digits all U.S. water-resource subregions are available from this website. 











All U.S. water-resource subregions





 Water-Resources Cataloging Unit 







 
This 8-digit Water-resources cataloging unit is the flow characteristic data of a site belongs to a water-resources accounting unit in a subregion that is a part of one of 21 USGS US water-resources region. 

It now starts making a sense (based on the hierarchical cataloging unit assignment) that the WRCU approach could gurantee uniqueness of a specific site flow characteristic record, at the same time, it becomes much easier to handle massive amounts of countinuous field measurement records thru the WRCU assignment. (actually, I strongly suspect that the WRCU schema must be designed by a SQL/RDBMS-oriented person for the sake of making his/her life less stressful from tons of field measurement data) 






 Site-specific WRCU(s) for P-ROUTE simulation 







 
For P-ROUTE simulation, you can find site-specific WRCU(s) by 



    

  1. Find the region number corresponding to your study site from the Water-resources region map or from the list 

    

  2. based on the geographical location of your site, determine a corresponding the Water-resources subregion number starting with the region number and its description 

    

  3. If you found 4-digit number(s) (region+subregion), then it's relatively easy to find out final WRCU(s) for channel reaches of your study site by comparing the description of WRCUs that starts with the same first 4-digit number. 


WRCU for Virginia and its adjacent states are available from this website as below. 


















 
Full 8-digit WRCU databases for the rest of 12 Water-resources regions are downloadable from the USGS Website



Back to WRR and WRCU section of P-ROUTE page