The Santa Fe River is a karst river that originates from Lake Santa Fe in Bradford County. The lake penetrates the Floridan Aquifer System (FAS) meaning the headwaters to the Santa Fe River are sourced from the FAS. The river initially flows over the Northern Highlands physiographic region across the Miocene deposited Hawthorne Unit. The Hawthorne Unit is comprised of clays and sands that allow surface runoff to be supported. Therefore, the dendritic pattern of rivers that are observed flowing into the Santa Fe River exist because of the sediment type that precludes significant infiltration. The Hawthorne Unit somewhat abruptly ends creating a feature called the Cody Escarpment. The Cody Escarpment acts as a transition from the Northern Highlands to the Gulf Coastal Lowlands. The Gulf Coastal Lowlands is mainly a karstic terrain that is relatively flat and contains substantial extents of well-drained, sandy soils which typically inhibit runoff and promote significant infiltration. Many rivers, including the Santa Fe River, will sink and flow underground at the transition. After some distance, the Santa Fe River emerges and begins to flow on the Gulf Coastal Lowlands. Here, it interacts with the aquifer via springs, seeps and fractures in the riverbed. Therefore, the river begins to become almost entirely supported through groundwater.

You can read more about Santa Fe River and the sink-rise system here: https://www.floridastateparks.org/learn/santa-fe-river-and-sink

Figure 1: Santa Fe River Basin. Blue, dark lines are rivers. Yellow dashed line is the Cody Escarpment. Red dots are locations of the stations you will be downloading. Green dots are springs emerging from the Floridan Aquifer System (FAS).

You will be downloading data for sites located along the Santa Fe River in northern Florida. You will download discharge and stage data for 3 sites. The sites with their respective USGS ID numbers are in Table 1

Site USGS Station ID

Worthington Springs, Santa Fe River 02321500

Ft. White, Santa Fe River 02322500

Table 1: Sites referenced and USGS ID numbers

To download this data and organize it, follow the steps below:

1. Go to https://waterwatch.usgs.gov/

2. Select “Current Streamflow” (Just click on the image)

3. Click on Florida

4. You can download data for each site using one of 2 methods

Method 1:

Select the site from the map. Use Figure 1 to guide you. When you hover over the site, the name and ID will pop up.

When you have the right site, left click the dot

Click the NUMBER of the site that (dark blue) under the Summary tab.

OR

Method 2:

Select List of all stations at the bottom of the Florida landing page and search for the ID’s

Click on the hyperlink for the site

5. Go to Classic Data Inventory menu on the top and select “Daily Data”

6. Under available parameters select “Discharge” and “Stage” (sometimes called stream height above a datum)

7. Under Output Format select Tab Separated.

8. Under Date put Begin date: 2016-01-01 and End date: 2021-12-31 and then click Go

9. The data will show up in a new tab (or same window) in your browser. When it is done loading push “Ctrl+A” on your keyboard which selects all the data. Then click “Ctrl+C” to copy.

10. Open up Excel

11. In an Excel tab, right click on the uppermost left cell (A1) and highlight “Paste Special” on the menu

12. When the new menu pops up select “Text” and hit OK.

13. Your data should now be formatted into individual columns, aside from some header text.

14. Rename your tab to the name of the site (Table 1) to keep track of your data (25 points)

15. Relabel the columns. In the header data, there should be an ID that shows you what variable is associated with a specific number. For example, in the image below, 26544_00060_00003 is associated with discharge. (See below) (25 points)

Scan the column names below this to identify which column is discharge. (See below)

16. Rename the discharge column with “Q (cfs)” whereby Q is the variable for discharge and cfs represents the units in cubic feet per second.

17. Once you are done with the header information, you can delete all ROWS above the dataset. (See below)

18. Repeat steps 4-17 for each site.

19. You have now formatted the data from the USGS water watch page for use in analysis (50 points)