2605.02190 How Biased Is the CONUS Survivor-Gauge Mean-Discharge Trend under Non-Random Gauge Attrition?
Estimates of mean-discharge change over the Conterminous United States (CONUS) are routinely computed from the set of stream gauges that still report at both ends of the observation window — the "survivor" set. We ask whether non-random gauge attrition biases this estimator.