The Hydroscope interface enables visualising and extracting a set of descriptors of the river flow regime (including hydrological indices representative of low, mean and high flows). These descriptors are derived from time series of daily discharge.

Skills in both hydrology and statistical analysis are required before running Hydroscope. The user should also be able to convert data file into an appropriate input file format.

Calculations are not allowed by Hydroscope when the size of the sample is too small (less than four years of record). In case the record period is ranging from 4 to 11 years, a warning message is displayed.

Values of the time series have to be higher or equal to zero.

Calculations are performed with default options. These options follow usual recommendations for statistical analysis applied to hydrology. The user is advised to read the technical literature associated with the hydrological indices, the stationarity tests and the statistical inference to avoid misinterpretation of the results.

Annual minima and maxima are sampled considering the calendar year as hydrological year. Seasonal sampling is currently not possible with Hydroscope

Available functionalities are listed in the menu located on the top of the webpage: 

1 - Data import

Importing the data is the first step. Hydroscope uses several input file formats to retrieve daily discharge data. The user specifies the appropriate format for the data to be read and then select a period of interest considered for the calculations.

Accepted data formats cover most standard data formats. Pre-processing may be necessary to conform to file formats available in Hydroscope.

If an error occurs, the user is notified with a message box. After the validation of the period of interest, the user can access the statistical tools for the hydrological analyses.

2 - Hydrological yearbook

The hydrological yearbook enables visualising, comparing and extracting the main indices describing the overall hydrological regime – mean annual discharge, mean monthly discharge, quantiles extracted from the flow duration curves, etc. Some indices are calculated for each year and others are calculated over the whole period of interest.

3 - High flows

This analysis yields the following information: 

-          A characteristic flood hydrograph and an associated characteristics flood duration, 

-          A sample of annual maximum of d-day mean discharges (VCXd) . This sample is tested for stationarity (both trend and step-change test) and is used to fit a statistical distribution and compute the associated quantiles for a set of return periods T.

4 - Low flows

This analysis enables extracting a sample of annual minimum of d-day mean discharges (VCNd). This sample is tested for stationarity (both trend and step-change test), and is used to fit a statistical distribution and to compute the associated quantiles for a set of return periods T.

At each step the user can open contextual help by clicking on "?" to get guidance for the choices. Hydroscope enables creating output files with the main results and saving the graphs displayed on each page.

Tip:  Different sessions of Hydroscope can be open in the browser to compare statistics from different gauging stations.