This application will be unavailable from 7am until 7pm CST on 11/11/2008 and from 7am CST on 11/14/2008 through 5pm on 11/16/2008. Sorry for any inconvenience.

USGS and EPA are working together to provide scientists and policy-makers an easier way to integrate access to their large water-quality databases. A common suite of web services allow for the automated sharing of water monitoring data via a common format and terminology. Initial web services are now available.

A web service is a computer-to-computer protocol that allows for the direct sharing of information. The services will provide the ability to combine data from USGS's NWIS and EPA's STORET systems. The services will produce data formatted according to the Water Quality Exchange (WQX) Outbound XML schema, which has been developed collaboratively by EPA and USGS. Applications such as internet portals can use the web services to access data from both NWIS and the STORET Warehouse without needing an authorized database connection.

The initial set of web services provide two core methods for accessing the information in these systems. Each of these web services has different input parameters and pre-defined output formats (or schema). Monitoring location information and associated water-quality results will be served through these two services. The Station Web Service will provide information for all monitoring locations within a given geographic area and the Results Web Service retrieves water-quality results (measurements) by site.

The NWIS Water-Quality Web Services serve data from the NWISWeb database.