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Introduction to the package

Source: vignettes/00-introduction.Rmd
00-introduction.Rmd

This package aims at streamlining pre-and post-processing of various types of data for hydrological modelling in Central Asia. It is under continuous development.

Several use-cases for the packages functionality are demonstrated in the CAHAM book Modeling of Hydrological Systems in Semi-Arid Central Asia.

Installation 

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("hydrosolutions/riversCentralAsia", 
                         quiet = TRUE)
library(riversCentralAsia, quietly = TRUE)

Note for windows users: the installation from github requires RTools.

Data

The package includes an example data set with discharge time series as well as temperature and precipitation time series from the runoff formation zone of the Chirchiq river basin.

library(riversCentralAsia, quietly = TRUE)
library(tidyverse, quietly = TRUE)
library(timetk, quietly = TRUE)
ChirchikRiverBasin  # load data
#> # A tibble: 29,892 × 14
#>    date        data  norm units type  code  station  river basin resol…¹ lon_U…²
#>    <date>     <dbl> <dbl> <chr> <fct> <chr> <chr>    <chr> <chr> <fct>     <dbl>
#>  1 1932-01-10  48.8  38.8 m3s   Q     16279 Khudayd… Chat… Chir… dec      598278
#>  2 1932-01-20  48.4  37.5 m3s   Q     16279 Khudayd… Chat… Chir… dec      598278
#>  3 1932-01-31  42.4  36.6 m3s   Q     16279 Khudayd… Chat… Chir… dec      598278
#>  4 1932-02-10  43.7  36.4 m3s   Q     16279 Khudayd… Chat… Chir… dec      598278
#>  5 1932-02-20  44.2  36.3 m3s   Q     16279 Khudayd… Chat… Chir… dec      598278
#>  6 1932-02-29  47.7  36.9 m3s   Q     16279 Khudayd… Chat… Chir… dec      598278
#>  7 1932-03-10  54.1  39.4 m3s   Q     16279 Khudayd… Chat… Chir… dec      598278
#>  8 1932-03-20  63.2  47.6 m3s   Q     16279 Khudayd… Chat… Chir… dec      598278
#>  9 1932-03-31 103    60.5 m3s   Q     16279 Khudayd… Chat… Chir… dec      598278
#> 10 1932-04-10 103    86.4 m3s   Q     16279 Khudayd… Chat… Chir… dec      598278
#> # … with 29,882 more rows, 3 more variables: lat_UTM42 <dbl>,
#> #   altitude_masl <dbl>, basinSize_sqkm <dbl>, and abbreviated variable names
#> #   ¹​resolution, ²​lon_UTM42
ChirchikRiverBasin |> 
  filter(type == "Q", 
         code %in% c("16279", "16290", "16298", "16300")) |> 
  group_by(code, station, river) |> 
  drop_na() |> 
  plot_time_series(
    date, data,
    .interactive = TRUE,
    .facet_ncol  = 2, 
    .facet_collapse = TRUE, .facet_collapse_sep = " - ", 
    .smooth      = FALSE, 
    .y_lab = "Q [m3/s]")

Tools

The package riversCentralAsia includes a variety of functions to facilitate data pre- and post-processing for hydrological and hydraulic modelling with RS Minerve in Central Asia.

RS Minerve is a free hydrological and hydraulic modelling software developed in Switzerland by CREALP and partners.

In summary, the functions can be grouped into:
* Reading and writing of input and output files of RS Minerve
* Pre- and post-processing of data for hydrolgical modelling with RS Minerve
* Glacier modelling tools
* Various helper tools for analysing and plotting hydrological data

Acknowledgements

This packages builds on previous work of R, RStudio and RS Minerve developers. It further relies on free data made available by publicly funded research. Open source R methods books and public forums inspired and supported the writing of the package.