MGBT (version 1.0.7)

plotPeaks: Plot Peak Streamflows with Emphasis on Peak Discharge Qualification Codes

Description

Plot U.S. Geological Survey peak streamflows in peak_va and discharge qualifications codes in the peak_cd columns of a peak-streamflow data retrieval from the National Water Information System (NWIS) (U.S. Geological Survey, 2019). This code makes use of the add.log.axis function from the lmomco package, and because this is the only instance of this dependency, the lmomco package is treated as a suggested package and not as a dependency for the MGBT package. The add.log.axis function also is used for the basis of the logarithmic plot within the plotFFQevol function.

This function accommodates the plotting of various nuances of the peak including less than (code 4), greater than (code 8), zero peaks (plotted by a green tick on the horizontal axis), and peaks that are missing but the gage height was available (plotted by a light-blue tick on the horizontal axis if the showGHyrs argument is set). So-called code 5, 6, and 7 peaks are plotted by the numeric code as the plotting symbol, and so-called code C peaks are plotted by the letter “C.” The very unusual circumstances of codes 3 and O are plotted by the letters “D” (dam failure) and “O” (opportunistic), respectively. These codes are are summarized within splitPeakCodes. The greater symbology set is described in the directory MGBT/inst/legend of the package sources.

The logic herein also makes allowances for “plotting” gage-height only streamgages but this requires that the splitPeakCodes function was called with the all_peak_na_okay set to TRUE. The gap analysis for gage-height only streamgages or streamgages for which the site changes from gage-height only to discharge and then back again or other permutations will likely result in the gap lines not being authoritative. The sub-bottom axis ticks for the gage-height only water years should always be plotting correctly.

Usage

plotPeaks(x, codes=TRUE, lot=NULL, site="",
             xlab="", ylab="", xlim=NULL, ylim=NULL,
             xlim.inflate=TRUE, ylim.inflate=TRUE, aux.y=NULL,
             log.ticks=c(1, 2, 3, 5, 8),
             show48=FALSE, showDubNA=FALSE, showGHyrs=TRUE, ...)

Arguments

x

A data.frame having a mandatory column titled peak_va and peak_cd. It is advised to have run makeWaterYear and splitPeakCodes first, but if columns resulting from those two functions are are not detected, then the water year column and code split are made internally but not returned;

codes

A logical to trigger use of character plotting characters and not symbols;

lot

The low-outlier threshold, but if omitted, then MGBT is triggered internally. Use of lot=0 is a mechansim to effectively bypass the plotting of a low-outlier threshold because a logarithmic vertical axis is used, and this setting would bypass a call to MGBT;

site

An optional character string for a plot title, and in practice, this is expected to be a streamgage location;

xlab

An optional x-label of the plot;

ylab

An optional y-label of the plot;

xlim

An optional x-limit of the plot;

ylim

An optional y-limit of the plot;

xlim.inflate

A logical to trigger nudging the horizontal axis left/right to the previous/future decade;

ylim.inflate

A logical to trigger nudging the vertical axis down/up to the nearest sane increment of log10-cycles. This inflation also includes a \(\pm\)0.01 log10-cycle adjustment to the lower and upper values of the limit. This ensures (say) that a 50,000 cubic feet per second maximum, which is on a sane increment, is nudged up enough to make the upper limit 60,000 instead. The point itself plots at 50,000 cfs;

aux.y

An optional set of values to pack into the data just ahead of the the vertical axis limits computation;

log.ticks

The argument logs of the add.log.axis function;

show48

A logical, if codes is set, will draw a “4” and “8” for those respective codes instead of a reddish dot;

showDubNA

A logical, if set, will draw a \(\pm\)half-year polygon for the water years having both NA discharge (peak_va) and NA gage height (gage_ht). To some analysts, it might be useful to study the degree of these double empty entries in contrast to just the records of such years not even being present in NWIS. Double empty entries could represent incomplete data handling on part of the USGS or inadvertently missing zero discharges for peak_va;

showGHyrs

A logical to trigger the light-blue special ticks for the water years having only gage height. The horizontal limits will be inflated accordingly if gage heights are outside the general discharge record; and

...

Additional arguments to pass to plot.

Value

No values are returned; this function is used for its graphical side effects.

References

U.S. Geological Survey, 2019, USGS water data for the Nation: U.S. Geological Survey National Water Information System database, accessed October 11, 2019, at 10.5066/F7P55KJN.

See Also

makeWaterYear, splitPeakCodes, plotFFQevol

Examples

# NOT RUN {
  # The dataRetrieval package is not required by MGBT algorithms.
  # Note that makeWaterYear() is not needed because splitPeakCodes() requires
  # the water_yr for gap analyses, and will call makeWaterYear() if it needs to.
  PK <- dataRetrieval::readNWISpeak("08167000", convertType=FALSE)
  PK <- splitPeakCodes(makeWaterYear(PK))
  plotPeaks(PK, codes=TRUE, showGHyrs=FALSE,
                xlab="Water year", ylab="Discharge, cfs") # 
# }
# NOT RUN {
# }
# NOT RUN {
  # The dataRetrieval package is not required by MGBT algorithms.
  # An example with zero flows
  PK <- dataRetrieval::readNWISpeak("07148400", convertType=FALSE)
  PK <- splitPeakCodes(PK)
  plotPeaks(PK, codes=TRUE,  showDubNA=TRUE,
                xlab="Water year", ylab="Discharge, cfs") # 
# }
# NOT RUN {
# }
# NOT RUN {
  # The dataRetrieval package is not required by MGBT algorithms.
  PK <- dataRetrieval::readNWISpeak("08329935", convertType=FALSE)
  PK <- splitPeakCodes(PK)
  plotPeaks(PK, codes=TRUE, showDubNA=TRUE,
                xlab="Water year", ylab="Discharge, cfs") # 
# }