Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dynamic stage to discharge rating model archive

June 6, 2022

Ratings are used for a variety of reasons in water-resources investigations. The simplest rating relates discharge to the stage of the river. From a pure hydrodynamics perspective, all rivers and streams have some form of hysteresis in the relation between stage and discharge because of unsteady flow as a flood wave passes. Simple ratings are unable to represent hysteresis in a stage/discharge relation. A dynamic rating method is capable of capturing hysteresis owing to the variable energy slope caused by unsteady momentum and pressure. Using some simplifying assumptions, Fread (1973) developed what was termed a “dynamic loop” rating method to compute discharge from a time series of stage at a single streamgage for channels with compact [...]

Publication Year 2022
Title Dynamic stage to discharge rating model archive
DOI 10.5066/P9YUV9DG
Authors Marian M Domanski, Robert R Holmes, Elizabeth N Heal
Product Type Data Release
Record Source USGS Digital Object Identifier Catalog
USGS Organization Water Resources Mission Area - Headquarters