Load Duration Curves: Spreadsheet and PowerPoint Tutorial Office of Water Quality Indiana Department of Environmental Management November 2003 By: Ernest L. Johnson III1 and Bruce Cleland2 1Assessment Branch, Office of Water Quality Indiana Department of Environmental Management 2525 North Shadeland Avenue, Box 6015 Indianapolis, IN 46206-6015 2America’s Clean Water Foundation 750 First Street N.E. Suite#1030 Washington, D.C. 20002 IDEM 32/02/084/2003

Assumptions for Tutorial Process of the tutorial was done using the following programs: Internet Explorer 6.0 Excel 97 SR-2 PowerPoint 97 SR-2 This is a draft copy. Issues regarding the mechanics of the spreadsheet or tutorial contact: ejohnson@dem.state.in.us Issues regarding Flow Duration concepts contact: b.cleland@acwf.org Problems encountered Netscape Navigator does not save U.S.G.S. ‘discharge’ data in .txt form All workbooks in Excel 97 need to be open in the same session of Excel If you print this please do not do so in color. You will need to uncheck the “Black & White” check box before printing or you will not get any backgrounds.

Go to http://waterdata. usgs Go to http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/sw This is where you will get your flow data. Click the Streamflow button.

Click the State box under Site Location, then click Submit.

Select Your State and click Submit

Find the gauging station nearest to your sampling area and click on the Site Number.

For example purposes, I’ve chosen Eel River near Logansport For example purposes, I’ve chosen Eel River near Logansport. The data set is current. *Note: if doing a Load Duration Curve the flow data must include the dates your samples were collected.

When you get to this screen, drop down the “Available data for this site” and Select “Station Home Page”.

Here is where you will copy the Station Description information into the Duration Curve Spreadsheet. 1. Click and Drag your cursor from “Location” to the end of the email address h20team@usgs.gov. 2. Select Edit and then Copy from the menu bar, or press “Ctrl + C”.

This is what the screen will look like when you select the data.

Notice the cells with the red triangle in the upper right corner? Place your cursor over these for helpful information. Open your “!WQ Tool(Template).xls” file. Select the cell you see here “A4” and click the Paste button or type Ctrl+V. You may need to adjust the column width if your data show a bunch of “#######”. In this workbook, anyplace you see Neon Green is a place where you will need to enter data. Also, when copying data from a web page it may not post just like this. You may need to delete out the original data and paste in as you see fit.

You can switch between the USGS site page and here to either copy or retype the information for Station Description in “A1” and the information for Station ID in “H2”, Station Name “H3”, and Drainage area “G4”. This information is linked throughout the workbook and you won’t need to retype them again. If you Copy, Paste the above information from the USGS Website, you should use Paste Special, Values.

Notice that the Station ID and Name have copied over automatically here for you. Click on the “Raw_Data” tab at the bottom and then go back to the USGS site to finish your flow data retrieval. We won’t do anything here just yet.

To get here we clicked in the “Available data for this site” and Selected “Surface-water: Daily streamflow. If you do not want/need all the data, you can select your own dates by typing in the range of interest. Select the “Tab-separated data” button and Click “Submit”

You will get the “File Download” screen. Click “Save”. The default name is “discharge”. Leave the default name as it appears. *The name must be the same or the copy program will not work later in the spreadsheet.

I’ve created a folder in “My Documents” as a standard place to put the discharge file. Notice that there is only one file. We do not need to keep the raw data once we copy it into our spreadsheet, so I will just overwrite the previous file.

The computer will tell you the file exists and “Do you want to replace it?”. Click “Yes”.

Now we want to open the file. Click “Open”. If you do not get the Download Complete window, Do Not Panic. You will need to manually open the file. Go to your Excel session and select File, Open and select the ‘discharge’ file from the folder it was placed.

Sometimes Windows won’t know which program to open the file in and you will get the “Open With” window. Simply select Microsoft Excel and click “OK”.

You should now be looking at the raw data from the USGS. Now, go back to the Flow Duration spreadsheet. Click “Window” and select the “!WQ Tool(Template).xls” workbook. *You may have noticed that we have yet to save your working file. Do not worry, this will happen shortly. We’ll save it when you have moved your raw data (and sample data if doing a Load Duration Curve).

Now that you are back to the “ Now that you are back to the “!Flow Duration…” workbook, be sure you are in the “Raw_Data” worksheet. The data will not show until you do the next step. Click on the “Click here to Get Data from USGS ‘discharge’ file” button…and…voila…your data should appear. If not, seek some assistance.

Go to the Sample_Data worksheet. Load Duration Curves have some additional base assumptions: The primary base assumption for Load Duration Curves is that you have already obtained the raw data from your database and it is in an Excel spreadsheet. Clear out any remaining data that may be left over. There shouldn’t be since you’ve opened the template that is read only, but you never know.

This is the column that you will eventually “Copy, Paste, Values” into your sample date column. You will have to select them all. Select the first date and then press and hold “Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow” then “Ctrl +C” to copy the data. Next go to the “Sample_Data” worksheet in the “!WQ Tool(Template).xls” Workbook. You will need to use this spreadsheet (AIMS_2_LDC_Format) if dates from your database include a time stamp with the date. This will tease apart the date/time data for use in the Load Duration Spreadsheet. Copy your raw data here by using “Edit, Paste Special, Values”.

Select the first green cell “A2” then Select Edit, Paste Special, “Values”, then click “OK”.

Now click the Flow_Data tab at the bottom Now click the Flow_Data tab at the bottom. You should see your flow data from the USGS Raw Data already here. Also, your Drainage area should be the same as on the first worksheet where you typed it in. If it’s not correct, recheck the “Site Info” worksheet. You don’t need to do anything else here.

Click back to the Sample_Data worksheet, Select Tools, Macro, Visual Basic Editor, or press “Alt + F11”. *Note: Your Sample Data needs to be in ascending chronological order or the program will not work. You can also have multiple same day data.

There are several Macros listed here, but we are only interested in this one. Click your mouse someplace in this area below “End Sub” near the top. Click the “Run” button, and your sample data dates will be matched with your flow dates data and the corresponding flow for your sample date will be matched. If all goes well you will see the next screen. If not, then something is wrong with your dates, e.g. not in ascending order, sample date within two weeks of raw flow data dates.

If all went well, you will see this screen. Click “OK”.

After you Click “OK” from the previous screen, you will come back here After you Click “OK” from the previous screen, you will come back here. Close this window out by clicking on the “X” in the upper right corner.

Now you have all the basic information you will need to generate a Load Duration Curve. Now is a good time for you to save your file.

Now you will need to copy over the rest of your data from the AIMS_2_LDC_FORMAT workbook. This will include sample time, TSS, E. coli, NO2, Phos. Any or all, depends on what you are graphing. *Note: you will be able to look at any WQ species, this is just a template. You will need to change the names, but as long as you know the WQ criteria and it can be measured (lbs/day, ton/day, lbs/sec, tons/hr etc) you will be able to modify this spreadsheet to meet your own ends.

Remember, to easily select all data, click in the first cell and then hold down your shift key and then tap your right arrow key to select across. When you have done that, continue holding down the shift key, then press the Ctrl + Down Arrow unit you get to the bottom of your data. If you go past and end up at the bottom of the spreadsheet, just tap the Up Arrow Key once while still holding down the CTRL key and it will move up to your last data entry. Next, Ctrl + C to copy, switch back the Load Duration spreadsheet and paste your newly copied data there.

Once again Select Edit, Paste Special, Values, then click “OK”.

You are just about ready to put your data into a PowerPoint Graph which will show your Load Duration Curve and plot your sample data.

Open your “!WQ Analysis(Template)” PowerPoint file. This looks like a lot of data, and it is, but for starters we are only going to look at total data and not seasonality, or percentiles, etc.

Bring up your datasheet by double clicking on the graph or click the graph and select View, Datasheet.

This is where you will copy your Load Data.

We now have our WQ Data and we’re ready to set our criteria We now have our WQ Data and we’re ready to set our criteria. For the tutorial we are looking at NO2+NO3

You’ll want to copy the data from this column into your PowerPoint. To get the data you’ll need to change the Season and Year to include the dates you are interested in graphing.

Notice we don’t have any data here to copy Notice we don’t have any data here to copy. We need to change the “equation” in this cell to “point” to the cells that have the data we are interested in e.g. (NO2+NO3). This cell is “pointing” to cell “J8” for data and we want to look at cell “L8”, so change the “J” to an “L”. Then Select all the cells in this column and click Edit, Fill, Down.

Now that the cells are being referenced properly, we can now move the data into PowerPoint. For this example, we’re only interested in “All Data”, so we will copy that column.

We will also need to copy the Flow Rank (%), this is what matches our Sample Load with a Flow. The “Flow Rank (%)” is the X-values, and our “All Data” is the Y-values forming the scatter plot data on our Load Duration Curve.

Having copied “Flow Rank (%)” data , copy the “All Data” to the “All Data” Column in PowerPoint. Next we’ll go and get our Load Duration data from “Load Duration Target” worksheet.

Here is where we get out Load Duration Curve data Here is where we get out Load Duration Curve data. Some things that you need to be aware of: 1. WQ Criteria is correct for the species you are looking at. 2. The equation in the “Load” column is correct. When this is correct, select the data in the Load Column and copy it.

Paste your Load Duration Curve data in this area.

For this example, I’m not going to worry about seasonal, storm flow, 90th, or median, so I will delete them out.

Don’t forget to save often Don’t forget to save often. It is always a good idea after you’ve moved data.

Since we’re dealing with larger numbers, we can adjust the Y-axis Since we’re dealing with larger numbers, we can adjust the Y-axis. Click on the graph, and double click on the Y-axis to bring up this screen. You can now adjust the scale accordingly. This will mess up your vertical lines, which we will change on the next screen.

Notice how our dividing lines are now short Notice how our dividing lines are now short. To fix this, double click the graph or select View, Datasheet again.

Change all the 10000 or 100000 (in this example) or to what ever your max scale is. This will move the lines to the proper height.

Now, modify all the text like you did for a Flow Duration Curve and you have a proper Load Duration Curve ready for presentation.

Suggested Reading Cleland, Bruce, 2003, TMDL Development from the “Bottom Up” -- Part III: Duration Curves and Wet-weather Assessments, http://www.tmdls.net/tipstools/docs/TMDLsCleland.pdf

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