NERC Data Catalogue Service
Hydrological monitoring data from Coalburn catchment, Northern England, 1967-2022
Hydrological monitoring data for 55 years from 1967 to 2022 for the Coalburn catchment (1.5 km2). The catchment is located in Northern England within Kielder forest, Northumberland, and is the longest running forest research catchment in the UK. In 1972/73 the upland grassland was ploughed and planted with a conifer forest. The trees are now mature and around 30% of the catchment has been felled. From 1967 to 1993 a mixture of hourly and daily data is available and from 1993 onwards all the data is hourly. The data consist of precipitation, discharge, potential evapotranspiration, other meteorological data and snow depths. The data has been extensively quality controlled and can be used for hydrological modelling or data analysis to understand the effects of forests on river flows. Full details about this dataset can be found at
https://doi.org/10.5285/88d72918-324e-42a8-a4f2-bbbc322814ff
Simple
- Date (Publication)
- 2025-02-11
- Identifier
- doi: / 10.5285/88d72918-324e-42a8-a4f2-bbbc322814ff
- Other citation details
- Birkinshaw, S. (2025). Hydrological monitoring data from Coalburn catchment, Northern England, 1967-2022. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre 10.5285/88d72918-324e-42a8-a4f2-bbbc322814ff
- GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
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- Environmental Monitoring Facilities
- Hydrography
- Access constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- no limitations
- Use constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Use constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- If you reuse this data, you should cite: Birkinshaw, S. (2025). Hydrological monitoring data from Coalburn catchment, Northern England, 1967-2022. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/88d72918-324e-42a8-a4f2-bbbc322814ff
- Spatial representation type
- textTable Text, table
- Spatial representation type
- grid Grid
- Distance
- 50 urn:ogc:def:uom:EPSG::9001
- Distance
- 5 urn:ogc:def:uom:EPSG::9001
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Character set
- utf8 UTF8
- Topic category
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- Biota
- Environment
- Begin date
- 1967-01-01
- End date
- 2022-12-31
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- Unique resource identifier
- OSGB 1936 / British National Grid
- Distribution format
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Comma-separated values (CSV)
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GeoTiff
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png
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jpg
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GeoPackage
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Comma-separated values (CSV)
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- OnLine resource
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Supporting information
Supporting information available to assist in re-use of this dataset
- OnLine resource
-
Download the data
Download a copy of this data
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
- Other
- dataset
Conformance result
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Statement
- The Coalburn catchment was first instrumented in 1967 by the Institute of Hydrology (https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/7372/1/IH_133.pdf). The Environment Agency, Forest Research and various NERC and EPSRC grant have enabled continuous measurements to be carried out to the present day. Analysis of the data to 2014 has been carried out (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.07.050). Originally 13 precipitation storage gauges were installed around the Coalburn catchment; these were reduced to 4 in 1972 and these 4 gauges were used to calculate the Theissen weighted catchment monthly precipitation from 1967 to 2003. In 1992 a Tipping Bucket Raingauge (TBR) was installed by the Environment Agency of at precipitation storage gauge site 12 near the outlet of the catchment. Corrections were made to the entire TBR time series so the aerially averaged monthly precipitation and the TBR over the coincident period (1992–2003) were comparable. A compound crump weir was installed at the outlet of the Coalburn catchment in 1966. This was replaced in 1991 due to leakage problems which resulted in some poor/missing data prior to 1991. A new central thin plate V notch within a non-standard broad crested weir was installed in August 1991. The original weir used a theoretical rating curve and there was good agreement between this and the gauged discharges. The new weir also uses a theoretical rating curve and excellent agreement has been found between these and the gauged flows. An automatic weather station (AWS) was installed at Coalburn in 1971 but owing to the remoteness of the site and problems with the equipment there are a considerable number of gaps in its data. The Eskdalemuir weather station is located 45 km north-west of Coalburn at a similar elevation. Data from this location were used for comparison with the AWS at Coalburn and to infill the missing data. Hourly potential evaporation (PET) has been calculated using the Penman–Monteith reference crop evaporation, ET0 , using this meteorological data. Snow depths used measured values from Eskdalemuir. All the data has been quality controlled with missing data infilled from nearby weather stations if possible.
- File identifier
- 88d72918-324e-42a8-a4f2-bbbc322814ff XML
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Character set
- ISO/IEC 8859-1 (also known as Latin 1) 8859 Part 1
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
- Hierarchy level name
- dataset
- Date stamp
- 2025-07-24T14:03:25
- Metadata standard name
- UK GEMINI
- Metadata standard version
- 2.3
Point of contact
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre
Lancaster Environment Centre, Library Avenue, Bailrigg
,
Lancaster
,
LA1 4AP
,
UK
https://eidc.ac.uk/
Overviews
Spatial extent
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