Texas Water Resources Institute

You will hopefully end up on a page that looks like this:

Once you get to the viewer, you have two options to find the data you're looking for. The first method is based on geography (you know what area you are interested in but not much more) while the second is a more direct route that allows you to select a specific monitoring site from within a specific segment (you know what station you are looking for). We'll start with the first method, which assumes you aren't familiar with the names of the stations you're interested in, so we'll use the maps to pinpoint the stations of interest.

Method I: Geographic identification

1. Select the basin of interest. We'll use Caddo Lake as an example, which is located in the Cypress Basin. Click on "4-Cypress" and you'll be brought to a grid with selectable squares outlined in blue:

   

2. Select the area of interest, first will be a 100 mile square, second a 25 mile square (you have to select several different squares to zero in on the Lake):

   

3. You should now see squares with the individual stations denoted, you must select one last area of interest or 6.25 mile square (3 different squares cover Caddo and have monitoring sites):

   

4. Once you select the 6.25 mile square, all the stations in that square will be displayed. Choose the stations of interest and click "Continue with selected stations":

   

5. Your selected stations will be shown, so if those are the only ones you want, then proceed by clicking "Get data." A list of parameters that are measured at the selected stations will come up. Select the parameters of interest from the list, then fill in your start and end dates:

   

6. You are now ready to export the data. But first, we'll cover another way to get the data you're looking for.

Method II: Selection by segment

The second method is the most direct approach and is much quicker, but will likely require previous knowledge of station locations in the watershed as it does not display the station locations on a map and relies solely on verbal descriptions. It is useful for users who access the database more frequently and have a better idea of what stations and data they need.

1. Select the basin of interest from the drop-down box either by name or Segment ID. Again, we'll use Caddo Lake as an example:

   

2. All sites within the segment will be displayed. If you need sites from multiple segments, click "Add Additional Monitoring Station" and you will be brought back to the previous page. Once you've made your selection, the stations will be appended to the current list and you can select the stations you want:

   

3. Click "Get Data." As before, the data parameters analyzed at each site will come up. Make your selections and continue with the same procedure as above to import the data into Excel.

Data Export and Organization

From here you'll be using MS Excel to format the data for ease of use. Make sure you have a copy of Excel on your computer and that you have a good idea of where files are stored on your hard drive when you download them from the internet.

1. Click the "Export to Pipe Delimited File" button and save the file to your desk top (the file will be in the Notepad "txt" format).
2. Open Excel and choose the "Data" tab, click on "From Text" and navigate to where you saved your file for later versions of Word or go to File->open in older versions (be sure to select 'all file types' to show the txt document). Unless you changed the file name when you saved, you should be looking for a file called "PublicDataReport.txt."
3. In the text import wizard select: "Delimited" and click "Next >"
4. Select 'other' in the delimiters box and type in the " | " symbol (Shift+\) located below the Backspace key, click "Next >":

   

5. A preview pops up, click Finish. From here we can start organizing the data. You should now have a data set that looks something like this:

   

You'll notice that the data is initially somewhat difficult to interpret, especially if you selected multiple parameters from multiple sites, but with some practice you should be able to format the data for your needs without much trouble. Depending on your needs, many of the columns of data will be unnecessary but can easily be deleted or hidden so that only the data of interest are visible.

Keep in mind that not all stations will yield a useable dataset - some stations may have only been used for a few days on a special study over 30 years ago and others may have 10 year gaps in data. Not all stations record the same data either, so if you can't find a parameter of interest at one station, it may have been recorded at one nearby, so make sure your search is thorough, as it may take several attempts to find the data you need.