Hydrologic data for urban storm runoff from nine sites in the Denver metropolitan area, Colorado

Abstract

Figure, 1.-Location of monitoring sites and general features. Approach An urban-hydrology monitoring site consists of several types of instrumentation. This instrumentation includes rainfall-measuring equipment, various stage and discharge-meauring devices, water-quality-sampling equipment, atmospheric-deposition sampler, input-output digital recorder, and the system control unit. Rainfall-measuring equipment is of two types-the tipping-bucket rain gage and the 3-inch pipe gage equipped with a float and digital recorder. The tipping-bucket rain gages which are not located at the monitoring site, are connected to the system control unit via telephone lines. Pipe gages only are used at the Rooney Gulch site, due to the lack of telephone lines.

An evaluation of rainfall-runoff data for the Denver Federal Center, Lakewood, Jefferson County, Colorado

“…The basin consists of 80 acres, of which 69 acres are offsite and 11 acres are on DFC property (table 2 and Additional basin and channel characteristics such as the area, centroid, channel length, channel slope, basin slope, total relief and elevation of the gaging site are given in table 3 (Alley and Veenhuis, 1979). Several studies of the offsite drainage have been published including one study of potential flood hazard by Grozier and others (1975); three hydro!ogic-data reports by Ellis and Alley (1978), Gibbs (1981), and Gibbs and Doerfer (1982); two hydro!ogic simulation reports by Ell is and Alley (1979) and Ell is and others (1983); and three drainage studies (Hydro-Triad, Ltd., 1973;1974;. The north tributary accounts for an additional 549 acres that drain to a series of retention storage ponds.…”

A summary of urban runoff studies in the Denver Metropolitan area, Colorado

“…DRCOG concluded that only establishing an urban runoff data base and implementing projects to evaluate the effectiveness of control measures could overcome the poor reliability of model evaluation studies. Hall andDuncan (1980 and1981), in a cooperative study between the Geological Survey and the city of Northglenn, reported that lead, manganese, cadmium, and copper occurred in urban runoff at concentrations exceeding Colorado water-quality standards for agricultural water. The study objectives were to determine the feasibility of using urban runoff for irrigation.…”

“…The location of the rain gages, subcatchments boundaries, and detailed drainage maps are presented by Gibbs (1981) and Gibbs and Doerfer (1982). See figure 2 for the location of monitoring sites.…”

“…Two basic-data reports (Gibbs, 1981;Gibbs and Doerfer, 1982) were published as Open-File Reports. A model calibration and verification report (Lindner-Lunsford and was published as a Water-Resources Investigations Report.…”

“…Urban storm-runoff data, collected from April through September 1980, from nine urban runoff sites, were presented by Gibbs (1981). Precipitation, rainfall-runoff, water-quality (common constituents, nutrients, coliform bacteria, solids, and trace elements), and basin-area data that are necessary to use the U.S. Geological Survey's Distributed Routing Rainfall-Runoff Model, Version II (DR3M-II) (Alley and Smith, 1982a) were published in this report.…”