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Evaluating the use of Soil Moisture, January Baseflow, and Snow Water Equivalent storage indicators to enhance Colorado Basin River Forecast Center water supply forecasts


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Created: Jul 16, 2025 at 4:59 p.m. (UTC)
Last updated: Nov 17, 2025 at 5:55 a.m. (UTC)
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Content types: Geographic Feature Content 
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Abstract

This resource provides the dataset and Python workflows used to evaluate improved water supply forecasting for the Upper Colorado River Basin and the Great Salt Lake Basin areas served by the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC). The study focuses on enhancing April–July runoff volume predictions by explicitly incorporating three key hydrologic storage indicators—January baseflow, soil moisture, and snow water equivalent (SWE)—alongside the official CBRFC Most Probable (MP) water supply forecast. These indicators represent antecedent conditions that help explain variability in spring snowmelt-driven streamflow across snow-dominated watersheds.

Data and Python code used to implement the multiple linear regression (MLR) models, station data processing, and spatial analysis are included here. The research found that combining multiple storage indicators with the CBRFC forecast leads to gains in predictive skill, particularly in headwater basins where natural hydrologic processes are less influenced by regulation. Among the variables evaluated, soil moisture contributed the largest improvements when added to the model.

This resource holds data and code used to compute the results reported in the MS thesis: Morovati, R., (2025), "Evaluating Use Of Multiple Hydrologic Storage Indicators To Enhance Streamflow Forecasting " MS Thesis, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Utah State University.

Subject Keywords

Coverage

Spatial

Coordinate System/Geographic Projection:
WGS 84 EPSG:4326
Coordinate Units:
Decimal degrees
North Latitude
43.4524°
East Longitude
-105.6268°
South Latitude
35.5582°
West Longitude
-111.9149°

Content

Data Services

The following web services are available for data contained in this resource. Geospatial Feature and Raster data are made available via Open Geospatial Consortium Web Services. The provided links can be copied and pasted into GIS software to access these data. Multidimensional NetCDF data are made available via a THREDDS Data Server using remote data access protocols such as OPeNDAP. Other data services may be made available in the future to support additional data types.

Related Resources

This resource is described by Morovati, R., (2025), "Evaluating Use Of Multiple Hydrologic Storage Indicators To Enhance Streamflow Forecasting " MS Thesis, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Utah State University.

Credits

Funding Agencies

This resource was created using funding from the following sources:
Agency Name Award Title Award Number
National Science Foundation HDR Institute: Geospatial Understanding through an Integrative Discovery Environment 2118329
Utah Water Research Laboratory Graduate Research Assistantship None

How to Cite

Morovati, R., Tarboton, D. (2025). Evaluating the use of Soil Moisture, January Baseflow, and Snow Water Equivalent storage indicators to enhance Colorado Basin River Forecast Center water supply forecasts, HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/83c1d73697cc461c8de6283f65b57498

This resource is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
CC-BY

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