Flow 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

2Americas Clean Water Foundation

750 First Street N.E. Suite#1030
Washington, D.C. 20002

IDEM 32/02/083/2003
 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.
2
Go to http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/sw This is where you will
get your flow data. Click the Streamflow button.

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

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Select Your State and click Submit

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

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For example purposes, Ive 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.

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

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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.

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

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Notice the cells
with the red
triangle in the
upper right
corner?
Place your
cursor over
these for helpful Open your !WQ Tool(Template).xls file.
information. 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.
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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
wont need to retype them again.
If you Copy, Paste the above
information from the USGS
Website, you should use Paste
Special, Values.

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 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 wont do
anything here just yet.

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 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

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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.

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Ive 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.

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

17
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.
18
Sometimes Windows
wont know which
program to open the file
in and you will get the
Open With window.
Simply select Microsoft
Excel and click OK.

19
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 workbook.
*You may have noticed that we have
yet to save your working file. Do not
worry, this will happen shortly.
Well save it when you have moved
your raw data (and sample data if
doing a Load Duration Curve).

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Now that you are back to the !WQ Tool(Template).xls
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 buttonandvoilayour data should
appear. If not, seek some assistance.

We are only doing a Flow Duration

Curve for this tutorial, so you can
now save the workbook. This is a
read-only document so it will ask
you for a new name.

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Here is the Flow Duration Summary. You will be
copying the cfs data into the PowerPoint
template, but well get to that in a second.

Were in the Flow Duration Spreadsheet.

22
You need to open the Flow Analysis(Template)
PowerPoint File.

Here is the template that we will

be changing. Start by double
clicking on a blank area of the
graph.

23
You should see a spreadsheet
open up, if not click View, then
Datasheet. Youll want to
expand the data sheet to see more
of the column data.

24
We will be copying our cfs flow data from
Excel into this column.
These numbers
are what will
draw your vertical
division lines at
10, 40, 60 and 90
percent. More on
this later.

25
Copy the cfs data by selecting
the data with your mouse and
typing Ctrl + C. Go back to
the PowerPoint template.

26
 Select the first cell
next to the 0.005
and paste your copied
data here by selecting
the paste button or
typing Ctrl + V

Notice that as soon as you pasted

your data your brown flow line
moved, and your black vertical
lines are now offset.
We will adjust these lines in the
next screen.

27
 Leave the cells with
0.001 alone and for the
other cells with 10, 40,
60, and 90 type in the
corresponding values
from your Flow column
(Column A).

As you change the values you should see the

black line move to meet the brown flow
line. If you want the vertical lines to extend
to the top, change the values to the max on
your y-axis.

28
Now for the cosmetic changes.
You should now change the following text
boxes:Title, cfs values, and square miles. Any
place there is text you can modify.

29
You now have a completed Flow Duration
Curve. You can move any of the text boxes
around by simply clicking on it and
dragging it to a new location.

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Now is a good time to save your
graph using whatever naming
scheme you prefer.

The next couple screens show you

how to insert a picture into your
PowerPoint.
31
Select Insert, Picture, From File,
then go to the location where the
picture is you want to insert.

32
Resize and place where you
want. There are many other
things you can do with
PowerPoint to spice it up if
you like, just ask.

33
 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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The End

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