hydrocan provides unified access to Canadian hydrometric data from diverse web-published sources. It is complementary to tidyhydat, which covers the federal Water Survey of Canada (WSC) network. hydrocan adds provincial and utility networks data sources that have no existing R package.
Every function returns a consistent tibble regardless of the underlying data source, so analysis code works unchanged as new sources are added.
You can install the development version of hydrocan from the Hakai Institute r-universe server:
install.packages("hydrocan", repos = "https://hakaiinstitute.r-universe.dev")The reading functions accept one or more station IDs, a date range,
and an optional source argument to target a specific
adapter directly. When source is omitted, the router
matches each station ID to its data source automatically. Every function
returns the same tibble columns regardless of source.
If you don’t know the station that you want to query, start with
hc_read_stations(). The station IDs it returns can be
passed to the reading functions below.
library(hydrocan)
hc_read_stations("hydroquebec")
#> # A tibble: 94 × 9
#> station_id station_name provider_name longitude latitude elevation_m
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 3-100 Outardes-4 hydroquebec -68.9 49.7 NA
#> 2 3-101 Outardes-3 hydroquebec -68.7 49.6 NA
#> 3 3-102 Outardes-2 hydroquebec -68.4 49.1 NA
#> 4 3-103 Petit Lac Manicouagan hydroquebec -67.8 51.8 0
#> 5 3-104 Barrage Intermédiaire hydroquebec -67.9 51.8 NA
#> 6 3-105 Hart-Jaune hydroquebec -67.9 51.8 NA
#> 7 3-106 Manic-5 hydroquebec -68.7 50.6 NA
#> 8 3-107 Manic-3 hydroquebec -68.6 49.7 NA
#> 9 3-109 Manic-2 hydroquebec -68.3 49.3 NA
#> 10 3-110 Manic-1 hydroquebec -68.3 49.2 NA
#> # ℹ 84 more rows
#> # ℹ 3 more variables: period_start <date>, period_end <date>, notes <list>hc_read_daily_flows() returns daily aggregates. Note
that not all providers publish daily data: check the
has_daily_flows column of hc_list_sources() to
see which ones do.
You can query daily flows from two stations across two sources in one call. hydrocan detects that “030101” belongs to CEHQ and “3-230” to Hydro-Quebec:
hc_read_daily_flows(
station_id = c("030101", "3-230"),
start_date = Sys.Date() - 30
)
#> ── hydrocan ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#> Observations: 27
#> Sources: cehq, hydroquebec
#> Parameters: water_discharge, water_inflow
#> Date range: 2026-05-06 to 2026-06-01
#> Stations: 2 returned
#> ✔ All stations returned.
#> ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#> # A tibble: 27 × 8
#> station_id date value parameter unit provider_name quality_code
#> * <chr> <date> <dbl> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 030101 2026-05-06 10.2 water_discharge m3/s cehq MJ
#> 2 030101 2026-05-07 24.0 water_discharge m3/s cehq MJ
#> 3 030101 2026-05-08 18.6 water_discharge m3/s cehq MJ
#> 4 030101 2026-05-09 12.0 water_discharge m3/s cehq MJ
#> 5 030101 2026-05-10 8.51 water_discharge m3/s cehq MJ
#> 6 030101 2026-05-11 8.02 water_discharge m3/s cehq MJ
#> 7 030101 2026-05-12 6.94 water_discharge m3/s cehq MJ
#> 8 030101 2026-05-13 5.79 water_discharge m3/s cehq MJ
#> 9 030101 2026-05-14 6.14 water_discharge m3/s cehq MJ
#> 10 030101 2026-05-15 16.2 water_discharge m3/s cehq MJ
#> # ℹ 17 more rows
#> # ℹ 1 more variable: qf_desc <chr>hc_read_flows() returns sub-daily observations.
# Sub-daily flow observations from a single Hydro-Quebec station
hc_read_flows(
station_id = "3-100",
start_date = Sys.Date() - 7
)
#> ── hydrocan ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#> Observations: 288
#> Source: hydroquebec
#> Parameters: water_discharge_spilled, water_discharge,
#> water_discharge_turbined
#> Date range: 2026-05-29 to 2026-06-01 23:00:00
#> Station: 1 returned
#> ✔ All stations returned.
#> ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#> # A tibble: 288 × 8
#> station_id timestamp value parameter unit provider_name
#> * <chr> <dttm> <dbl> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 3-100 2026-05-29 00:00:00 0 water_discharge_spi… m3/s hydroquebec
#> 2 3-100 2026-05-29 00:00:00 316. water_discharge m3/s hydroquebec
#> 3 3-100 2026-05-29 00:00:00 316. water_discharge_tur… m3/s hydroquebec
#> 4 3-100 2026-05-29 01:00:00 0 water_discharge_spi… m3/s hydroquebec
#> 5 3-100 2026-05-29 01:00:00 316. water_discharge_tur… m3/s hydroquebec
#> 6 3-100 2026-05-29 01:00:00 316. water_discharge m3/s hydroquebec
#> 7 3-100 2026-05-29 02:00:00 0 water_discharge_spi… m3/s hydroquebec
#> 8 3-100 2026-05-29 02:00:00 317. water_discharge m3/s hydroquebec
#> 9 3-100 2026-05-29 02:00:00 317. water_discharge_tur… m3/s hydroquebec
#> 10 3-100 2026-05-29 03:00:00 0 water_discharge_spi… m3/s hydroquebec
#> # ℹ 278 more rows
#> # ℹ 2 more variables: quality_code <chr>, qf_desc <chr>hc_list_sources()If you use data accessed through hydrocan in your work, please cite
the original data source. Use hc_citation() to get a
formatted citation and BibTeX entry:
hc_citation("hydroquebec")
#> To cite 'hydroquebec' data in publications use:
#>
#> Hydro-Québec (2026). "Débits et apports naturels aux installations
#> d’Hydro-Québec." Accessed via the hydrocan R package License: CC
#> BY-NC 4.0,
#> <https://donnees.hydroquebec.com/explore/dataset/donnees-hydrometriques/information/>.
#>
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#>
#> @Misc{,
#> title = {Débits et apports naturels aux installations d’Hydro-Québec},
#> year = {2026},
#> note = {Accessed via the hydrocan R package License: CC BY-NC 4.0},
#> author = {{Hydro-Québec}},
#> url = {https://donnees.hydroquebec.com/explore/dataset/donnees-hydrometriques/information/},
#> }