Chen et al. (2026) Streamflow composition in U.S. rivers is shifting toward recent precipitation

Identification

• Journal: Communications Earth & Environment
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-07-07
• Authors: Chuqiang Chen, Admin Husic
• DOI: 10.1038/s43247-026-03788-2

Research Groups

• Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
• Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory, Virginia Tech, Manassas, VA 20110, United States

Short Summary

This study reconstructs hourly event water fraction (EWF) across the contiguous United States from 1986 to 2024 and analyzes its temporal trends and drivers. The results show that EWF has increased significantly at 27% of sites over the past four decades, driven primarily by intensifying precipitation and urbanization.

Objective

• Investigate changes in event water fraction (EWF) across the contiguous United States from 1986 to 2024.
• Identify the drivers of these changes, including climatic and anthropogenic factors.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Continental-scale analysis of EWF across the contiguous United States.
• Temporal Scale: Hourly EWF estimates from 1986 to 2024.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Long short-term memory (LSTM) networks for reconstructing hourly event flow and streamflow records.
• Data sources: Sub-hourly specific conductance (SC) and streamflow observations, precipitation data from the NOAA Analysis of Record for Calibration (AORC) dataset, and catchment attributes from the BasinATLAS dataset.

Main Results

• EWF has increased significantly at 27% of sites over the past four decades.
• Intensifying precipitation and urbanization are the primary drivers of this increase.
• The median rate of annual EWF change across all 754 catchments is 0.009 dec⁻¹ (p < 0.05).
• Significant increases in EWF occur nearly twice as often as significant increases in streamflow.

Contributions

• This study provides a comprehensive, continental-scale analysis of EWF and its drivers.
• The results highlight the importance of considering both climatic and anthropogenic factors when evaluating changes in EWF.

Funding

• This research was funded by [insert funding agency or project name].

Citation

@article{Chen2026Streamflow,
  author = {Chen, Chuqiang and Husic, Admin},
  title = {Streamflow composition in U.S. rivers is shifting toward recent precipitation},
  journal = {Communications Earth & Environment},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1038/s43247-026-03788-2},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03788-2}
}