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Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed, Arizona (Precipitation)

Metadata Updated: April 21, 2025

An extensive precipitation database at the 149 km2 Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEW) has been developed over the past 53 years with the first records starting in August 1953 and continuing to the present. The WGEW is a tributary of the San Pedro River, surrounds the town of Tombstone in southeastern Arizona, and has a drainage area of approximately 149 km2. Elevation of the watershed ranges from 1220 m to 1950 m above mean sea level (MSL). Average annual precipitation for the period of 1956-2005, as measured with six gauges, is roughly 312 mm, with approximately 60% falling during the summer monsoon. Precipitation consists almost solely of rainfall with relatively rare instances of hail and snowfall. From a historical high of 95 rain gauges, a current network of 88 gauges is operational. This constitutes one of the densest rain gauge networks in the world (0.6 gauges/km2) for watersheds greater than 10 km2. Through 1999, the network consisted of analog recording weighing rain gauges. In 2000, a newly designed digital gauge with telemetry was placed adjacent (1 m) to the analog gauges. Both the analog and digital networks of gauges were in operation from 2000 to 2005 to enable a comparative analysis of the two systems. The analog data were digitized from paper charts and were stored in breakpoint format. The digital data consist of rainfall depths at 1-min intervals during periods of rainfall. Resources in this dataset:Resource Title: GeoData catalog record. File Name: Web Page, url: https://geodata.nal.usda.gov/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/WalnutPrecipitation_jjm_2015-03-20_1018

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons CCZero

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date March 30, 2024
Metadata Updated Date April 21, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from USDA JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date March 30, 2024
Metadata Updated Date April 21, 2025
Publisher Agricultural Research Service
Maintainer
Identifier 10113/AA24353
Data Last Modified 2024-02-13
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 005:18
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 9b89c2ef-fe5b-47b3-a417-47525fc9b716
Harvest Source Id d3fafa34-0cb9-48f1-ab1d-5b5fdc783806
Harvest Source Title USDA JSON
License https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Old Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -110.2, 31.773, -109.9, 31.773, -109.9, 31.662, -110.2, 31.662, -110.2, 31.773}
Program Code 005:040
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 9f02882b8fef0e6ee76993c2a5101aa4b1e61ff8b199b23c6c445f8fb2ac838b
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -110.2, 31.773, -109.9, 31.773, -109.9, 31.662, -110.2, 31.662, -110.2, 31.773}
Temporal 1953-01-01/1953-01-01

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