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Sanity-check lake loading against simple hydrological benchmarks

Source: R/check_loads.R
check_loads.Rd

Flags discharge and load values that look implausible relative to the lake's own volume and surface area, or relative to broad plausible concentration ranges (the same ranges applied at ingestion by standardise_inflow()). This is a lightweight order-of-magnitude sanity check – not a substitute for expert review – intended to catch things like unit errors (e.g. m3/s mistaken for m3/day), a lake volume/area that doesn't match the inflow data, or forcing data that has been mis-scaled.

Usage

check_loads(aeme, loads = NULL, verbose = TRUE)

Arguments

aeme

Aeme object.

loads

data.frame; output of summarise_loads(aeme, by_inflow = FALSE). If NULL (default), it is calculated internally.

verbose

logical; if TRUE (default), emit a cli_warn for every flagged check.

Value

A data frame with columns check, value, unit, lower, upper, flag (TRUE if value falls outside [lower, upper]) and message (NA when not flagged).

Checks performed

  • residence_time_days: lake volume divided by annual discharge, in days. Flagged if outside [1, 36525] (1 day to 100 years) – a lake flushing in under a day, or essentially never, usually indicates a units or magnitude problem rather than a real lake.

  • hydraulic_loading_m_yr: annual discharge divided by lake surface area, in metres of water per year. Flagged if outside [0.01, 1e5] m/yr.

  • implied_conc_*: the flow-weighted mean concentration implied by load / discharge for each of NIT_amm, NIT_nit, PHS_frp, CAR_doc and CHM_oxy (when present), checked against the same plausible ranges used by standardise_inflow().

Thresholds are deliberately loose (order-of-magnitude) so that only clearly implausible values are flagged.

Examples

aeme_file <- system.file("extdata/aeme.rds", package = "AEME")
aeme <- readRDS(aeme_file)
check_loads(aeme)
#>                    check        value unit lower  upper  flag message
#> 1    residence_time_days 1.029366e+02 days  1.00  36525 FALSE    <NA>
#> 2 hydraulic_loading_m_yr 2.570428e+01 m/yr  0.01 100000 FALSE    <NA>
#> 3   implied_conc_NIT_amm 2.961474e-03 g/m3  0.00     10 FALSE    <NA>
#> 4   implied_conc_NIT_nit 8.953549e-04 g/m3  0.00     10 FALSE    <NA>
#> 5   implied_conc_PHS_frp 1.043143e-03 g/m3  0.00      5 FALSE    <NA>
#> 6   implied_conc_CAR_doc 9.780457e-03 g/m3  0.00    100 FALSE    <NA>