Thornforest Hydrology & Water Quality
How have water quantity and quality changed across the lower Rio Grande region over the last 25 years — and do those changes line up with thornscrub restoration? These pages compile and explore publicly available hydrological and water-quality data for three South Texas HUC-8 watersheds, as part of the American Forests Thornforest project.
Three HUC-8 subbasins: South Laguna Madre (12110208), Los Olmos (13090001), and the Lower Rio Grande (13090002). Federal hydrography and monitoring data are US-only and stop at the international border; capturing the Mexican side of the basin is planned future work.
Every map is live — hover for details, use the toolbar to zoom and pan, and click legend entries to toggle layers on and off. Long data tables scroll within a fixed-height box (the header stays pinned). Code is hidden by default; click “Show code” to reveal it.
The notebooks
1 · USGS Hydrofabric
The spatial foundation: fetches the three HUC-8 watershed boundaries and maps them on an interactive topographic basemap.
2 · USGS WaterData stations
Discovers the USGS monitoring stations within the watersheds via the new USGS Water Data API and records which priority parameters each measured — water quantity (discharge, water level) and water quality (conductivity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, nutrients, pH, turbidity, …) — mapped with a click-to-toggle legend.
Built with Quarto; data from the USGS Water Data APIs and the HyRiver toolset. Source on GitHub.