Streamflow and weather conditions of seven small coastal watersheds, British Columbia, Canada, 2013–2019

• DOI: 10.5194/essd-2021-423
• Publication Date: 2021-12-15T05:48:48Z
• Authors: Maartje C. Korver; Emily Haughton; William C. Floyd; Ian J. W. Giesbrecht
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 15. Life on land; 01 natural sciences; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Abstract. Hydrometeorological observations of small watersheds of the northeast Pacific coastal temperate rainforest (NPCTR) of North America are important to understand land to ocean ecological connections and to provide the scientific basis for regional environmental management decisions. The Hakai Institute operates a densely networked and long-term hydrometeorological monitoring observatory, that fills a spatial data gap in the remote and sparsely gauged outer coast of the NPCTR. Here we present the first five water years (October 2013–October 2019) of hourly streamflow and weather data from seven small (< 13 km2), coastal watersheds. Average yearly rainfall was 3267 mm, resulting in 2317 mm of runoff and 0.1087 km3 of freshwater exports from all seven watersheds per year. However, rainfall and runoff were highly variable depending on location and elevation. The seven watersheds have rainfall-dominated (pluvial) streamflow regimes, streamflow responses are rapid and most water exports are driven by high-intensity fall and winter storm events. Measuring rainfall and streamflow in remote and topographically complex rainforest environments is challenging, hence advanced and novel automated measurement methods were used. These methods, specifically for stream flow measurement allowed us to quantify uncertainty and identify key sources of error, which varied by gauging location. Links to the complete dataset, watershed delineations with metrics, and calculation scripts can be found in Sect. 6 and 7.