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Streamflow Entering the Great Salt Lake

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Type:	Resource
Storage:	The size of this resource is 58.7 MB
Created:	Apr 25, 2023 at 1:19 p.m. (UTC)
Last updated:	Oct 27, 2026 at 3:53 a.m. (UTC)
Citation:	See how to cite this resource
Content types:	CSV Content

Sharing Status:	Public
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Abstract

This describes work on the calculation of Great Salt Lake (GSL) inflows for modeling and analyses in support of declining lake levels. This derives from the procedures of USGS 00-4221 (Loving et al., 2000) who estimated GSL streamflow inputs for 12 years from 1987-1998, and Mohammed and Tarboton (2012), who modeled GSL levels for 1950-2010 water years. Some deviations from the methods given in USGS 00-4221 (Loving et al., 2000) were necessary due to limited availability of data for the extended period and where there were opportunities for improvement.

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Coverage

Spatial

Coordinate System/Geographic Projection:

WGS 84 EPSG:4326

Coordinate Units:

Decimal degrees

Place/Area Name:

Great Salt Lake

North Latitude

41.7940°

East Longitude

-111.7200°

South Latitude

40.6203°

West Longitude

-113.0713°

Content

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README.txt

Great Salt Lake Surface Streamflow Inflows
David Tarboton 10/26/26

This resource holds work on the calculation of Great Salt Lake surface streamflow inflows, drawing upon data obtained from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Salt Lake County.

Updated 10/26/2026. Most recent complete water year is 2026 (10/1/2025 to 9/30/2026).

Changes in the 10/2026 update
- USGS daily streamflow is now retrieved with the R package dataRetrieval (function read_waterdata_daily, USGS Water Data APIs). The legacy NWIS web service used previously
no longer works. New downloads are saved as CSV files in the DataNew folder.

Software requirements
R with packages dataRetrieval (recent version with read_waterdata_daily), readxl and lubridate.

How to run
1. Set the R working directory to this resource folder.
2. Run GSLStreamflowsAnalysis.R. With downloadUSGS=TRUE it first downloads updated USGS data into DataNew. Set downloadUSGS=FALSE to reuse the files already there.

Input files
GSLStreamflowsAnalysis.R. Driver R script to download and process streamflow data. It also evaluates alternative models explored in the streamflow analysis.
StreamflowScripts.R. Functions used by GSLStreamflowsAnalysis.R to download and read USGS and Salt Lake County data. Uses the dataRetrieval package for USGS data and can read both the earlier USGS RDB text files and the new CSV files.
GSLFunctions.R. General purpose R utility functions used in this project (e.g. water year sums).
CompareUsgsDownloads.R. Compares daily and monthly flows from the earlier USGS files (Data) with the dataRetrieval downloads (DataNew).
StreamflowStations.xlsx. Stations used (sheet 1) and regression parameters (sheet 2).
jordan_flows_1902_2022.xlsx. Jordan River annual flows used to extend the Jordan record.

Output files
Monthly values are volumes in acre-ft. Water years run October 1 to September 30.
In annual files a date column gives the water year start date (e.g. 1949-10-01 is water year 1950).
GSL_surface_streamflow_input.csv. Monthly surface streamflow inflow to Great Salt Lake by basin. Earlier versions of this file are also included.
Bear_, Weber_, Jordan_Monthly_Streamflow.csv and Bear_, Weber_, Jordan_Annual_Streamflow.csv. Monthly and annual streamflow for each basin, acre-ft.
BearStreamflowPlot.csv, WeberStreamflowPlot.csv, JordanStreamflowPlot.csv. Annual streamflow (kaf/yr), loess smooth (kaf/yr) and annual streamflow converted to cfs.
annstreamflow.csv. Annual streamflow by basin and total, acre-ft.
annualsummary.csv, summtab.csv. Summary tables of mean annual flows by basin and period (thousand acre-ft).
FarmingtonStudyStreamflow.csv. Streamflow prepared for the Farmington Bay study. https://www.hydroshare.org/resource/6ac1da6643184aa0a7ade5715f98fe83/

Folders
Data. Raw data. Holds USGS data downloaded with the earlier web service prior to 2024, and the Salt Lake County data files, which are still read from this folder.
DataNew. USGS daily streamflow saved by the updated R scripts using dataRetrieval (one CSV per station plus download_log.csv recording what was retrieved and when). Updated by the scripts.
LovingTables. Tables from Loving et al. (2000) used to check the reproduction of the data for the overlapping period.
plots. PNG files of the plots produced by GSLStreamflowsAnalysis.R, numbered in the order produced.

Description files
GSLStreamflowSummary-11-27-22.docx. Summary notes document.
StreamflowFullAnalysisnotes-11-27-22.docx. Full analysis notes document.

Citations
Loving, B. L., K. M. Waddell and C. W. Miller, (2000), "Water and Salt Balance of Great Salt Lake,
Utah, and Simulation of Water and Salt Movement through the Causeway, 1987-98," Water-Resources
Investigations Report, 00-4221, U.S. Geological Survey, Salt Lake City, Utah.

U.S. Geological Survey, USGS Water Data for the Nation, https://waterdata.usgs.gov/, accessed 10/2026.

De Cicco, L.A., Hirsch, R.M., Lorenz, D., Watkins, W.D., Johnson, M., dataRetrieval: R packages for
discovering and retrieving water data available from U.S. federal hydrologic web services,
doi:10.5066/P9X4L3GE. (Use citation("dataRetrieval") in R for the exact version used.)

Related Resources

This resource belongs to the following collections:

Title	Owners	Sharing Status	My Permission
Collection of Great Salt Lake Data	David Tarboton	Public & Shareable	Open Access

Credits

Funding Agencies

This resource was created using funding from the following sources:

Agency Name	Award Title	Award Number
Utah Water Research Laboratory	UWRL State Funding to support GSL Analysis	None
National Science Foundation	HDR Institute: Geospatial Understanding through an Integrative Discovery Environment	2118329

How to Cite

Tarboton, D. (2026). Streamflow Entering the Great Salt Lake, HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/bb2bba84e1d5424db9211a991a7e5dd8

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

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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