Office of Surface Water and the other technical offices are considering the definition and determination of operational parameters. While that consideration is ongoing, operational parameter availability will be restored to 120 days at the request of several Water Science Centers and cooperating users. Further clarification and policy will be forthcoming.
In order to improve performance, we removed the progress bar from pages where it was not needed.
Addition of parameter 00671, Orthophosphate, water, filtered, mg/L as phosphorus, as a real-time parameter
Instantaneous values are now available back to October 1, 2007
Instantaneous values (IVs) are periodic time-series measurement made by automated equipment in the field. IVs include gage height, streamflow, water temperature, depth of wells below land surface, as well as many other parameters.
With this release, instantaneous values are now supported from October 1, 2007 to the present. Previously, the limitation was that only the last 120 days of IVs were available for a site. Actual data availability will vary by site and parameter within a site depending on criteria established by the local USGS Water Science Center. In particular, data for some parameters will be limited to 30 days. Please see the IV Data Availability Statement for more information.
Instantaneous data will appear in tables, graphs, and tabular output (RDB) within the USGS Water Data for the Nation site (waterdata.usgs.gov). Data will also appear within the instantaneous values web service on the USGS Water Services site (waterservices.usgs.gov).
This is part one of a two part project. Part two, which is expected by October 1, 2013, will further expand the period of availability back to the beginning of the period of electronic IV data storage (roughly the mid to late 1980s).
Addition of new parameter code 72216 - Location of salt front in river miles upstream from mouth, mile.
Changed current parameter code 99122 to mg/L - Orthophosphate, water, filtered, field, milligrams per liter
Fahrenheit secondary axis for parameters measured in Celsius. The following parameters listed below are measured in Fahrenheit and have a related Celsius equivalent parameter. There are several other parameters measured in Fahrenheit , but these do not an equivalent Celsius parameter such as 62846 for Soil temperature, degrees Fahrenheit.
New Site service features. The Site service offers three important new minor filters:
Ability to search by USGS parameter code (parameterCd). For example, you could find all sites that serve water temperature data in degrees Celsius using the argument ¶meterCd=00010.
Ability to search by data collection start date, end data or a period of time from now. Sites selected will include sites where any data were collected during a date range that you specify.
Ability to locate sites by national aquifer or local aquifer.
New Instantaneous Values service features:
Expanded period of data available for Instantaneous Values service. The Instantaneous Values web service now allows data to be selected from October 1, 2007 to the present. Previously, the limitation was that only the last 120 days of IVs were available for a site. This complements similar functionality also available on the USGS Water Data for the Nation site (waterdata.usgs.gov).
Allows searches by site status (active, inactive, all), site altitude and drainage area.
Real-time groundwater sites can be queried based on well depth, hole depth, national aquifer code and local aquifer code.
GZip Compression is provided for all output formats offered within the NWISWeb IV Web Service.
All modern Web Browsers typically send the "Accept-Encoding: gzip, compress" request header for all HTTP requests.
Data-miners writing their own custom applications should take care to add this request header within their programming language library or data mining utility such as "wget".
New Daily Values service features:
The Daily Values web service allows retrieval by national aquifer code and local aquifer code.
New examples
There is a new Site service example demonstrating integration of the Site service with Google Maps. (Note: Google Maps is a commercial product and may require a license for use.)
Bug fixes
Due to inconsistent results, time zones for date arguments (startDt and endDt) can no longer be used for any web services.
Show sites on map. With this release you can use the search interface to refine a list of specific sites that interest you, then show their locations on a map. Currently Google Maps is being used to display site locations. Simply select the "Show sites on map" radio button for the output format, then submit the form.
General Functionality
Corrected text to not imply statistics are available for February 30.
Updated documentation to show all columns output in the tab-separated format for field measurements.
Parameter Groundwater level relative to Mean Sea Level (MSL), feet (72150) is now listed in the Water Level/Flow category when selecting a real-time parameter to display.
The USGS has retired all services that were formally on interim.waterservices.usgs.gov domain. Please use the newer services instead. Links to and pages for interim water services have been removed.
No web services have been changed. However, numerous errors have been corrected in the documentation. Some of the changes:
A USGS parameter code field was inadvertently left in the Site Service Test tool. This feature is not ready yet, so the field was removed from the tool.
There was confusion between USGS parameters and URL parameters. To reduce confusion, URL parameters (key/value pairs) are now referred to as arguments.
When using a web service test tool, the "Run Generated URL" button now shows the content in a separate window.
Product showcase has been updated with additional applications.
Corrected ancillary text in some of the sample applications.
Web 2.0 example on the water services main page has been improved.
Modified NWIS Mapper to use expanded Site Web Service to retrieve site information.
New Functions:
Use of the expanded Site Service provides selection of sites by type of data collected, including:
Any data
Current conditions (real-time or most recent data and values for up to the last 120 days)
Instantaneous data (historical)
Daily data (summary for a particular day such as maximum, minimum and mean)
Peak data
Surface-water measurements
Groundwater measurements
Water-quality samples
Annual data report is available online (one or more since 2006)
Added direct link to real-time data page when a real-time site is selected on the map.
Enhanced Navigation:
Removed real-time sites from Include menu because current conditions is a data type and is included there.
Added URL argument to allow input of default site mapping group.
Moved glaciers from Surface Water to Other Sites mapping group.
Simplified list of selectable areas to just U.S. States and territories. Other areas can still be viewed using the Enter a Place or Address control.
Modified layout of header navigation to avoid conflict with browser window resizing.
Documentation:
Added links to help for site mapping groups.
Renamed Instructions to Help.
Updated Help.
Moved Disclaimer link from header bar to below map.
Renamed USGS topographic map base to Topo to eliminate confusion that service is supplied by USGS. The topographic map base is supplied by a commercial source.
Added disclaimer to warn users that topographic map base is not available for all areas.
Added notice that the map will only show sites for which location coordinates are available and pointed users to NWIS Web Interface to obtain available water data for any sites.
Added warning message if user tries to select Inactive sites with Real-time data, which is an illogical combination.
Three production-class water web services are now available. Read more details on the Waterservices web site.
New Daily Values web service - Daily value data for one or more sites can now be retrieved in a number of flexible ways, similar to the Instantaneous Values web service, including sites by site number, state, county, hydrologic unit and latitude/longitude box. The default output is WaterML 1.1. You are invited to test the service.
For any of the three production services, selecting a major site type now returns sites that have minor site types of the same type. For example, selecting the Stream major site type (ST) also returns minor stream site types of canal (ST-CA), ditch (ST-DCH) and tidal stream (ST-TS). Previously, you had to explicitly request all four site types to get all stream site types. In addition there is no limit to the number of site types that can be specified in one call. Previously the limit was four.
Site web service - This service is no longer Beta and is now production class.
Unfortunately, there is no way yet to get the data in a XML format. Geography Markup Language (GML) will eventually become the service's XML default format once metadata integration issues with GML are resolved. Currently GML support is expected in November 2011. The service's default format continues to be tab-delimited (RDB).
The service was re-engineered to use a common code base, but functionality is largely unchanged.
The feature that allowed focus on instruments at a particular site location (methodId) has been removed, due to a change in how the USGS configures instruments at sites. The methodId parameter can still be used, but will be ignored and multiple sensors may appear in the output.
Previously, format=json,1.0 was allowed. Now, format=json,1.1 is preferred, as it mirrors version 1.1 of WaterML. format=json,1.0 will still work, but is deprecated and may disappear in future versions of this service.
Retirement of interim Daily Values and Site web services planned for October 1, 2011. The old daily values web service, first released in 2008, which returns daily values for a single site only, will be retired on October 1, 2011. The service is documented here. In addition, an old version of the site service (which returns site information only for a single site, or for those within a lat/long box) will also be retired on that date. That service is documented here. There are other very old and rarely used web services also on this machine that will also be retired on this date. The host interim.waterservices.usgs.gov will not be accessible after that date. All web services will be hosted from redundant servers on waterservices.usgs.gov. Users should migrate applications to the new services by this date.
Water web service usage is growing. The first production web service (the instantaneous values web service) became a production service in August 2010. Since its introduction, waterservices.usgs.gov has seen steady growth. In October 2010, 1.6M successful page requests were recorded. In June 2011, 7.8M successful page requests were recorded, 7.4M of which were from outside the USGS.
In the site documentation, some page names have changed to have shorter names:
Water-quality samples now display when no results are associated with the samples. Previously they were only seen in tab-separated (RDB) output.
If your search criteria includes specific parameter codes, none of which are found, a no data found message will display.
The number of records that can be downloaded in one request has been raised from 35,000 to 100,000.
The link to "Build sequence" and "Build table" on the real-time page is now "Build time-series" and "Build real-time table", which is easier to understand. The associated explanatory text has also been changed.
Output formats
The time datum (zone) now appears in both HTML and in tab-delimited (RDB) site-visit outputs.
Parameter description comments in tab-delimited (RDB) output that are not actually available for the sites requested no longer appear.
Fixed a bug to add a tab character between the datetime and tz_cd fields in the tab-separated outputs for Instantaneous data. This was deployed as a patch some months ago.
Updated Instantaneous Value data flags:
Dry flag description has changed from "Zero flow" to "Dry", which is more descriptive.
Added ZF1 flag to indicate Zero Flow.
Added Mnt flag to indicate the site is undergoing maintenance and thus not reporting.
Added a ‘P’ code description to HTML tables for real-time values to indicate they are provisional.
Graphs
Fahrenheit scale appears in relevant graphs. Fahrenheit tic marks appear on the right side of graphs that show temperatures (parameter codes 00010 and 00020). Celsius still appears for legends on the left side of these graphs.
An error message that was generated when a measurement partial date existed no longer shows when graphs are requested. This occurred with graphs for groundwater field measurements and surface-water peaks.
Groundwater-level graphs are no longer inconsistent when the measurement timezone for instantaneous values is different than the timezone used for recording manual field water-level measurements.
Water-quality changes
The number of sites and observations shown in the search criteria screens for daily value and groundwater field water-level observations is now correct.
Bugs in filtering were corrected to show only sites that have the requested parameter codes.
The table of available data is now showing the correct counts.
The minimum number of observations option should work correctly now for all searches.
Four real-time parameters (32295, 45590. 72206, 72207 and 99243) were added. See our parameter code look-up page for full information on parameters.
32295 - Colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM), water, in situ, single band excitation, fluorescence emission, ppb QSE
45590 - Temperature, internal, within equipment shelter, degrees Fahrenheit
72206 - Sublimation from snowpack per recording interval, millimetes
72207 - Albedo (ratio of reflected to total incoming solar radiation), ratio
99243 - Distance to snow surface from sensor, centimeters
Documentation changes
Updated text descriptions on the search criteria page when searching for sites from the inventory page.
Updated the help reference tables to the July 2011 version.
To minimize confusion, map legends are consistent with USGS WaterWatch.
Data descriptions for instantaneous and daily value data now include a USGS water science center specific label to better describe the parameter name: parameter name (Location Name) [WSC web label]
When selecting an output format and retrieving by date, when you click on the start or end date field, the associated radio button is now selected.
When refining sites listed on a real-time page, the navigation banner now forces the user to select either station name or station number.
To accommodate accessibility requirements, a link to a plug-in page has been added to the footer on all pages.
Corrected bugs where the well depth, hole depth, and altitude value search criteria were not being used to constrain retrievals.
Usage facts about this site.
Did you know that USGS Water Data for the Nation web statistics for this site are publicly available? Check out our Analog statistics.
Usage of this site has been growing steadily since it was released in Beta form in 2001. In June 2011, a record 26.33M successful page requests were made, with most data requests for recent stream flow data.
At least half of the traffic to the site comes from automated requests.
On a typical month, this site is the second most visited USGS site after Earthquakes.
Fixed a bug in the water quality data displays that did not show a sample if results were not available.
Outputs now correctly filter data to show that the user requested a minimum number of observations.
Surface water site counts for measurements are now displayed. Fixed an incomplete sentence in the site inventory criteria message.
The values for labeling the scale on the secondary y axis (right side of plot) are now correctly calculated for field water-level measurements in Hawaiian local elevation datum.
User requests for a specific time period to display daily values (like 30 days) now result in graphs that include only that time period. Improved date validation has been implemented when users specify a time period to display daily value data.
Fixed bug in the groundwater level and peak graphs that was affecting partial dates. If the month is not known, January is assumed. If the day in the month is not known, the first of the month is assumed.
Corrected the field measurement tab separated output to have a tab separating the measurement_dt and tz_cd instead of a space.
New Beta Site Service - A "beta" quality site web service is available for use. This service provides information about hundreds of thousands of water sites, both current and historical, maintained by the USGS or its cooperators. Users are reminded that beta services may occasionally experience operational issues. The service is accurate and stable, however not all features have yet been implemented. The service allows multiple site retrievals using a number of filters. USGS RDB (tab-delimited), Google Maps, Google Earth and a USGS Mapper output formats are supported. A full site service is expected to be available in July 2011. Service details including a test tool are available on the USGS Water Web Services web site.
Instantaneous Values Web Service Bug Fixes
A Standard Time bug was fixed. Not all sites were accurately reporting measurement changes when the modifiedSince values were less than two hours. This happened due to incorrect logic when sites moving from daylight savings time to standard time. This bug has been fixed.
Email address shown in HTTP 503 error pages is now correct
timeSeries tag is now always closed for WaterML output. This bug occurred when no sites were found matching the request.
Instantaneous Values that have been approved by a USGS Water Science Center will now reflect that approval with a qualifier code of 'A' for Approved. Previously all values were shows as 'P' for provisional.
New Instantaneous Values Web Service Bugs
The Javascript Object Notation (JSON) format for this service has a previously undiscovered limitation. The JSON format offered by the Instantaneous Values service may not work with browser based applications. Instead, an intermediate proxy may be needed. This problem is due to browsers not trusting JSON content that is not acquired by the server presenting the web page. A JSONP version of this format is planned for a future release that will remove this limitation.
Groundwater discrete values are now output with continuous time-series groundwater values on all tables and tab-separated outputs. The help system has been updated to reflect this new functionality.
Improved logic for properly converting field water-level measurements datums to the secondary axis for instantaneous groundwater levels values.
The time datum (time zone) has been added to display of surface-water field measurements . The time datum column is set to "blank/null" for RDB outputs and set to "--" for web pages if there is no time of measurement provided. See the updated Help system describing the updated output format.
Data aging code now included in the instantaneous value rdb output
Status of Dry on Instantaneous value graphs, tables, and tab-separated outputs has been updated for groundwater conditions. Help system updated with further information.
Corrected the incorrect link for national aquifer codes available in a pre-formatted or tab-separated format in the help system
Changed "Land-surface elevation XX.X feet above sea level NGVD29" to "Land-surface elevation XX.X feet above NGVD29" in site descriptions
Addressed bugs with secondary y-axis labeling for all graphs. The change addresses the improper use of the reference to sea level in the secondary y-axis label. The label for the secondary y-axis will reference the datum used to describe the altitude of a site or the datum taken from the parameter that was measured at a site. The datum used to determine the altitude of a site are typically in NVGD29 or NAVD88 datums. Parameters measured at a site can be referenced to these datums as well as the HILOCAL or GULOCAL datums. The secondary y-axis label will not be shown on the graph if the datum used to reference the altitude of a site is different from the datum used to reference the values of a parameter, and if the datums used to reference the values of two parameters are different. In addition, no graph will be shown if the datum used to reference the values of a parameter changed over the period of time the parameter was measured at a site.
The time zone is now displayed for field measurements in all table and tab-separated outputs of that data
Water services documentation has been edited for clarity, to hide infrequently needed help text and to provide examples of using the Instantaneous Values web service as a Web 2.0 application.
Instantaneous Values tab-separated output no longer displays records with just dates and times when there are no data values.
Streamflow percentiles displayed below instantaneous value streamflow graphs are now 25 and 75 instead of 20 and 80.
A consistent return message is displayed when no results are returned for water quality searches.
Partial dates for groundwater levels are now displayed correctly within HTML tables.
A direct link to the USGS Wateralert system now allows users to quickly set an alert to obtain the site and parameters in which they are interested.
New real-time parameters are added. See our parameter code lookup page for full information on parameters.
72159 - Evapotranspiration, mm/day
72200 - Evaporation per recording interval, millimeters
82072 - Dial reading, number
Documentation
Improved routing of feedback so that if users are at the national level and have a data questions the email requests goes directly to the Water Science Center best able to respond.
A link to the DOI Disclaimer is now available on all site map pages.
A link to special water data tips is now available in the lower right footer on all web pages.
Updated the About us page with newer technical information about this system.
Updated Automated Retrieval Information page to address format changes and provide details on the USGS multi-year strategy for water web services.
The U.S. Geological Survey is pleased to announce the availability of two important new water web services:
NEW Instantaneous Values Web Service for Real-Time data
Users now have the ability to retrieve USGS real-time instantaneous values data for multiple sites with a single request. The web service provides data in Extensible Markup Language (XML). The current tab-delimited (RDB) file format supported by the USGS Water Data for the Nation site is also supported by the web service.
This web service is production quality and highly available, meaning that it is redundantly hosted, closely monitored and is available 24/7/365. In most cases, you can expect a faster response using the web service than using the USGS Water Data for the Nation site. The data in the web service are identical to the data provided in the USGS Water Data for the Nation site.
You can select data from multiple sites with a single request using a broad set of filters, such as by state, county, watershed and latitude/longitude box. If you have programs that currently download tab-delimited real-time data, you should seriously consider using this new web service instead.
Users can request basic information about a specific USGS hydrological site or a range of sites within a given latitude and longitude. These sites can be filtered for active, inactive or real-time only sites. Filtering is also possible by certain site types such as surface water, groundwater or atmospheric. A number of XML-based output formats are provided, including two that ease the display of sites on Google Maps and Google Earth.
This web service has been available for some time, but has moved from "beta" to production status. Daily values are derived by summarizing time-series data for each day for the period of record. This service is available as both a REST and a SOAP web service.
More improvements to water web services are planned in 2011
In 2011, additional improvements are planned for all of the above web services including new features and data delivery formats. We will provide details of these planned changes later this year on the USGS Water Web Services Site. If you have suggestions on features you would like to see in the instantaneous values, daily values or site web service,
please send them to the USGS Water Web Services Team
Groundwater levels with incomplete dates are now plotted differently on graphs.
Some older measurements were recorded with just the month and year, and others with just the year. Previously, the data were plotted at the middle of the period, but are now plotted at the beginning of the period. For example, when the day is not known, but the month is known, the first of the month is plotted. If only the year is known, January 1st is plotted. This makes plotting groundwater levels consistent with other
data types.
Water quality data retrievals functionality has improved. Changes allow users to specify if samples need to contain data for all parameters specified, or contain data for at least one of the parameters specified. In addition, you can search for samples and results above, below or at a threshold that you set.
Ability to search for new and recently modified surface-water measurements.
Output format changes
Time zone is now displayed for field groundwater-level measurements in both HTML and tab-separated outputs.
For HTML, the time zone is displayed within the Time column
For rdb output, a new field has been added for the time zone:
Example: Previous Field Groundwater-Level Measurements tab separated output format.
Parameter code 72199 - Water depth, water surface to bottom, feet
Parameter code 32283 - Chlorophyll, total, water, in situ, fluorometric, 650-700 nanometers, relative fluorescence units (RFU)
Parameter code 72024 - Pond Storage in gallons
Parameter code 85583 - Temperature, intragravel water degrees C
Bug fixes and other minor changes:
"Data type" search criteria
Removed "Surface Water: Daily streamflow" as a data-type search criteria option (Daily Data has its own search interface and is no longer constrained to just streamflow).
Removed the "Any data type" search criteria (Default is Any so it was unnecessary).
Data for "Period of Record Summaries of Discrete Water-Quality Data" will now be displayed when outputting site-description information on the daily-data or daily-statistics pages.
Period of Record Summaries will now display a "--" instead of a blank or null date of zeros (0000-00-00).
The Time-zone code (tz_cd) is displayed when retrieving instantaneous values in a tab-separated format.
The "File of site numbers" option is available when retrieving daily, monthly, and annual statistics.
The search criteria option for "Hydrologic Unit" can be sorted by name or code.
When no latitude or longitude value exists for a site, a "--" is displayed.
Updated help system to better explain Site Water Level Status Codes.
A GroundwaterWatch link is available on the real-time predefined displays for all states.
Parameter Units are listed when outputting parameter codes in HTML or tab-separated formats from the help system.
The update time selection criteria works correctly when outputting the most recent values.
The "Lat-Long box" option is available to search for real-time sites.
Users can search for site visits updated within a specified time period.
All "?" icon boxes on all search pages link to the appropriate section in the help system.
Users can graph daily values without having long-term statistics being displayed.
Areas without counties no longer have "County" appended to their names (District of Columbia, Louisiana Parishes, Puerto Rico Municipios, Alaska Burroughs).
Approved and Provisional periods of data are properly labeled on all instantaneous and daily value graphs.
Statistic codes are defined via the help system.
All graphs properly display site names when they include apostrophes.
For Streamflow statistics table, the header includes the month and day.
Metric streamflow graphs can be displayed in log scale if desired.
Instantaneous graphing displays are improved when the duration is less than 12 days and greater than 3 days.
March 2010 - Updates to waterdata.usgs.gov web system
Notable enhancements in this release are
The most recent 120 days of instantaneous values are now available for all real-time sites.
All instances of groundwater text have been modified to be consistently spelled "groundwater".
Groundwater instantaneous and daily-value graphs now contain field water-level measurements.
Groundwater instantaneous and daily-value graphs now contain two axes (Depth and Altitude).
Notable bug fixes in this release are
Surface-water peak graphs can now be correctly switched between log and arithmetic scales.
Surface-water field measurements can now be correctly plotted in log space.
Using this site with Adobe Flex or the Flex API
Adobe Flex requires our servers have a crossdomain.xml file indicating those domains
that can access our data using Adobe Flex. With this release, we are publishing a crossdomain.xml file.
However, there are possible security issues with allowing potentially untrustworthy Flex applications to be run
from any domain. Thus, we are adding domains approved to use Adobe Flex on this site on a case by case basis.
If you need to access the service using Adobe Flex or the Flex API, please
contact us
and indicate the domain(s) of the computers that will access the service using Adobe Flex.
January, 2010 - Update to waterdata.usgs.gov web system
This upgrade allows for 120 days of instantaneous values to be available for real-time sites. The data will become available as the Water Science Centers across the country update their software, increasing their data availability from 60 to 120 days. This could take as long as several weeks for all data to be available.
November, 2009 - Updates to waterdata.usgs.gov web system
Particularly notable in this release is the reintroduction of streamflow channel characteristics, such as measured stream width, area, and velocity. These data were removed in July 2008 when our internal NWIS database was expanded to incorporate multiple channel streams. Your patience was appreciated while the USGS worked to extended this expansion to this system.
Many users have requested the ability to "bookmark" a hydrograph so it can be embedded in their own web pages. With this release, this is now possible.
Also in this release, time-zone information will accompany all time-series data. Time-zone information will appear both in web pages and in downloaded tab-delimited files. Users with automatic retrieval programs should revise programs as necessary to accommodate the time-zone information using samples files identified below.
Streamflow channel characteristic information - This information will be available after each individual USGS Water Science Center (WSC) upgrades their software and pushes up the channel information to the web. This process will begin November 23, 2009.
Users now have the option to retrieve channel level information from field streamflow measurements. Note that an individual streamflow measurement can include data from one or more channels. The following channel level data are provided (although many fields will be missing for measurements made prior to 2009):
- channel number
- channel name
- channel measurement type
- channel discharge measurement method
- channel velocity measurement method
- channel discharge
- channel width
- channel velocity
- channel area
- channel type
- channel longitudinal velocity description
- channel horizontal velocity description
- channel location code
- channel location distance
Streamflow, groundwater, or other real-time data tables will now have the time-zone information added to the datetime column. The time zone shown is the time zone used at the measurement site. The time zone is still not displayed on graphs
Example: Current Instantaneous values tab separated output format.
agency_cd site_no datetime 14_00065 14_00065_cd
5s 15s 16d 14n 10s
Example: New Instantaneous values tab separated output format.
Use http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/?06130500.rdb as an example site with new tz_cd to test your automated retrieval scripts.
The outdated TIGER Maps on the site map pages have been replaced with Google Maps, including an optional USGS map base. This should make it much easier to find where sites are located.
More work will be done to better integrate the Mapper with this web system in the future.
Persistent URL for graphs
Purpose: Provide a persistent URL to graphs of the most recent USGS real-time water data suitable for inclusion in a HTML image tag on user-defined web pages.
Several significant enhancements have been made to the USGS Water Data for the Nation Mapper:
Replaced U.S. Board of Geographic Names (GNIS) place name search with Google address searching.
Added selections for display of Active and Inactive sites. Available selections now include All, Active, Real-time, and Inactive sites.
Added to List Sites view: Site Types, Count of Sites.
Added button to get Keyhole Markup Language (KML) for sites showing on map panel. KML can be saved for use in other applications or directly displayed in Google Earth if user has it loaded.
Added button to cancel drawing of sites when time is excessive. List Sites and KML buttons will still return the full group of sites that are within the map panel boundaries.
Added contact link for site/data questions.
Bug fixes
List Sites did not include collocated sites. This has been fixed.
Added check to not display List Sites if no Site Types are checked.
July 2009 - Updates to waterdata.usgs.gov web system
Users have long requested the ability to retrieve water quality data in a more granular way. This release introduces a long-requested search by parameter code capability that allows users to fine-tune their queries for specific parameter codes rather than only by the more coarse-grained parameter groups. In addition, there are more water quality groups from which to choose. To accommodate the new groups, the USGS has moved to a 3-character parameter grouping.
Help system improved to provide USGS parameter codes for CASRN (American Chemical Society Registry Number) and USEPA SRS (Substance Registry System) Names
Users can search for water quality sites using parameter codes (manual entry, range of parameters, or by supplying a file of parameters). Up to 200 parameter codes can be searched at a time. When using this criteria, sites with any of the parameters selected (logical 'or' operation) are returned.
Water quality parameter codes can also be specified for output display.
Parameter codes can be entered either interactively or using a file of parameter codes
Water quality data is now classified using a 3-character parameter group code
New group code
New group
Old group
Old group code
INF
Information
Information
I
PHY
Physical
Physical
P
INM
Inorganics, Major, Metals
Major inorganics
M
INN
Inorganics, Major, Non-metals
NUT
Nutrient
Nutrients
N
MBI
Microbiological
Biological
B
BIO
Biological
IMM
Inorganics, Minor, metals
Minor and trace inorganics
C
IMN
Inorganics, Minor, Non-metals
TOX
Toxicity
OPE
Organics, pesticide
Organics
O
OPC
Organics, PCBs
OOT
Organics, other
RAD
Radiochemistry
Radiochemicals
R
ISO
Stable Isotopes
Stable isotopes
A
SED
Sediment
Sediment
S
POP
Population/Community
Taxonomic enumeration
E
OTH
Other
Other
U
HAB
Habitat
Introducing an integrated USGS Water Data for the Nation Mapper
This release includes a scalable mapping interface. This interface will display USGS water sites on a web mapping tool and will ease the process of locating relevant sites through zooming and panning. At a certain level of magnification, when you click on a site you can be directed to the site page for additional details. The mapper will be accessible inside the USGS Water Data for the Nation site through a prominent blue button on appropriate pages and through the Data Category drop down boxes near the top right corner of the page. The mapper utilizes both USGS and Google Maps imagery.
Bug Fixes
Popups are now visible in Internet Explorer and Firefox for real-time maps
Added link to news page in all page footers
Links to presentation quality measurement graphs work correctly
Updated tab separated output headers provide better description of data fields
Removed redundant county code list
Help button on Parameter Codes page returns a help page instead of an error message
When specifying time periods for statistical daily values, data are returned in correct order.
Correct Period of Record information is returned by all points of request
The Annual Data Report Link points to the most recent year's report
The Annual Data Report and the Instantaneous Data Archive links are visible for sites with available data
The help system's aquifer codes are sorted by state then by alphabetical order per state
Monthly and Annual statistics display when selected
Lake levels are displayed on the National Lakes and Reservoir page
New real-time Parameters
72180 Evapotranspiration, inches
72181 Moisture content, soil, volumetric, fraction of total volume
72182 Atmospheric water vapor density, grams per cubic meter
99237 Acoustic Doppler Velocity Meter signal to noise ratio
99238 Loctn ADVM cell end from Sontek
99239 Acoustic Doppler Velocity Meter standard deviation, data element specified in data descriptor
99240 Acoustic Doppler Velocity Meter standard error of velocity, feet per second
99241 Location of Acoustic Doppler Velocity Meter cell end, meters
99242 Acoustic Doppler Velocity Meter standard error of velocity, centimeters per second
March 2009 - Updates to waterdata.usgs.gov web system
Added real-time parameter 61626 - Lake or reservoir water surface elevation above NGVD 1929, m
Improved graphing logic to ensure that historical discrete measurements are displayed on current instantaneous and daily streamflow graphs
Improved error message when all latitude and longitude values are not entered when searching for sites
Added peak_tm to comment section of tab separated output of peak streamflow information
Added link to new WaterQualityWatch web site
Added link to Active Water Level web site
Updated description of fields in tab separated output of recent instantaneous values output
December 2008 - Updates to waterdata.usgs.gov web system
New Features
New Site Types are now implemented in all searching and data outputs
Help Text Updates
More real-time parameters available
Added navigation support for US Territories including American Samoa, Guam, and Northern Mariana Islands
Site Type Changes
We have removed the station_type_cd field from our site file information. This field contained a string of Y and N characters to denote the station type and was cryptic to understand.
A new field, site_tp_cd is now available and it contains a 2-7 character abbreviation of the site type which will contain a primary site type and possibly a secondary site type. The site types available can be found here
When searching for site type, uses new site types instead of older YN character string
When outputting Site Information, new site types are used instead of older YN character string.
Navigation changes
Link for the Annual Data Report (ADR) on “Available data for this site” pulldown menu now points to most recent data sheet
Improved error messages for USA level retrievals of water quality data to request users perform queries at state level
Links on AVAILABLE DATA table now stay at the state level on a site Home Page
Help text updates
Updated automated retrieval information document to emphasize that the UTC data element currently only works when retrieving water quality data.
Parameter code 99401 - Residue, dissolved, water, filtered, estimated by regression equation, milligrams per liter
Parameter code 72149 - Stream velocity, meters per second
Parameter code 72126 - Standard deviation of wind direction, degrees
Parameter code 75969 - Barometric pressure, not corrected to sea level, millibars
Parameter code 63675 - Turbidity, water, unfiltered, broad band light source (400-680 nm),
detection angle 90 +/- 30 degrees to incident light, nephelometric
turbidity units (NTU)
Parameter code 72174 - Longwave radiation, upwelling intensity, watts per square meter
Parameter code 72175 - Longwave radiation, downwelling intensity, watts per square meter
Parameter code 72176 - Temperature of sensor, degrees Celsius
Misc
Sites with multiple data parameters of 00045 and 99772 (precipitation and metric precipitation) will now display both locations in all tables and graphs.
Corrected display of measurement data related to shift_applied_va
This site has recently updated their User Interface and listed below are some of the significant features and bug fixes.
July 2008
Removal of width, area, and velocity from Streamflow Measurements on this site
As part of the July 2008 update to this site, the properties of stream width, area, and velocity were removed from the streamflow measurements (surface-water field measurements) available on this site for the following reasons:
The streamflow measurements provided on this site are primarily made in support of continuous stream gaging stations. For this use, it is critical that the measured streamflow is representative of the gaging station at which the measurement was made. Other properties such as width, area, and velocity, however, are not representative of any one location on the stream. In most cases the exact location of the measurement will vary from year to year or measurement to measurement as channel geomorphology or flow conditions change. The measured streamflow is always representative of the stream gaging station, but the other properties are not. In addition, for many measurements the total flow is the sum of several different channels of a stream, each with a width, area, and velocity. It can be misleading to attempt to represent these multichannel measurements because of the overly simplistic display of these complex data and the potential for misuse with a single width, area, and velocity.
The decision to remove width, area, and velocity from this site was predicated by a major expansion in the internal NWIS database to store a much more complete and accurate representation of a discharge measurement, including the location of each measurement and the potential for multiple channels. We do not feel it appropriate to simplify the new internal design into the old this site display due to the problems noted above. We intend to incorporate the new details of discharge measurements into this site as soon as possible. Because of the complexity of the new database design, an updated this site display of measurements to include these data will inherently be more complex and require careful consideration. In the mean time, we have chosen to limit display to those measurement properties most associated with support of continuous stream gaging stations.
We are aware of the importance of providing width, area, and velocity on this site for use in geomorphologic, water-quality, or other studies. Until we can provide an accurate portrayal of these data from the new database design on this site, interested users should request these data directly from USGS Water Science Centers, where the data and its limitations can be adequately explained on a site-by-site basis as necessary.
We regret any inconvenience and will work toward the restoration and clearer presentation of these data as soon as possible.
More streamflow measurements are now available (No longer limited to only active gaging stations)
Modified measurement outputs for new improvements (html and rdb)
Modified measurement symbol on graphs (from X to *) for greater visibility
Improved Station Name Searching ability (Use quotes for exact matching, allows apostrophes, multiple spaces, and period)
Peak formats should now be more consistent with qualification codes in all outputs
Changed peak watstore format name to peakfq
Implemented new three-character medium codes for water-quality data
Added links to Instantaneous Data Archive to allow access to long term data
Added links to Annual Data Report
Added additional geographic regions: American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam
Format Changes
Measurements (html, and rdb)
Peaks (peakfq, html, rdb)
Discrete water-quality data (html, rdb)
Feb 2008
Water-quality data now updated nightly if changes occur in the USGS Water Science Centers' NWIS Database.
Updated Automated Retrievals web page to show how to do water-quality retrievals.
It is now possible to search for water-quality data at the national level using data attributes.
Monthly statistics now calculated over user specified time period instead of limited by USGS defined statistical summary period.
Date format now output in user selected sequence for measurements and daily values.
Now displays graphs of today's data for sites on other side of international dateline.
"Site Home Page" from pulldown menu has now been renamed to "SUMMARY OF ALL AVAILABLE DATA".
Instantaneous value tab-separated data outputs now have masking periods applied correctly.
Latitude/Longitude searching for sites on other side of international dateline should now work correctly (negative longitudinal values).
Added new real-time parameter codes:
00048 Total partial pressure of dissolved gases, water, unfiltered, percent of saturation
00197 Evaporation, accumulated, inches
72036 Reservoir storage, thousand acre feet
72125 Atmospheric water vapor pressure, calculated, kilopascals
Surface water measurements are now redirected to the nwis.waterdata system.
Precipitation accumulation periods are now calculated based upon current date and time rather then the result date of the data for the first site on the page.
Added documentation for current_rating_nu in the Surface Water help section.
Fixed issue where groundwater level graphs were not being created.
Updated rdb header text for water-quality tab separated data outputs.
Period of record is now used if no begin date is specified but an end date is specified for water-quality searching.
Multiple masking periods are now correctly being applied for Daily Value data.
Removed GW tutorial Link.
Parameter code searching will now match regardless of case for parameter name and group name.
Calendar/water year properly displayed in annual statistic tab-separated (rdb) outputs.
Sites with a mean value of .0 should now display that value correctly.
Enabled Visual Identity Standards
Past news of relevance
Users of this site now have the enhanced ability to retrieve recently
collected provisional water-quality sample data. Previously, data were shown on this site
only after an annual quality-assurance review period had passed.
Because of this more timely release of the water-quality sample data, provisional data may
be subsequently revised after initial release, and data users are
cautioned to consider carefully the provisional nature of the
information before using it for decisions that concern personal or
public safety or the conduct of business that involves substantial
monetary or operational consequences.
New descriptive attributes were added to the presentation of
water-quality data, and some less useful, previously supplied
attributes were removed. Users are given an option of selecting
an expanded set of data attributes or a "default" (smaller) set of
attributes. When retrieving tab-delimited data, users also have a
layout option to represent each row as a sample or each row as a
single measurement result. Not all attributes are available in each
retrieval layout. The attributes are listed in the table 1.
Table 1.--Availability of water-quality attributes in tab-delimited files
presented in sample and result layouts and default and expanded
sets of attributes.
["-" indicates the attribute is not presented in this format.
"X" indicates the attribute is presented in both default and expanded sets,
"/" indicates the attribute is presented only in the expanded set.
"\" indicates the attribute is presented in the expanded attribute set or
concatenated with the value unless the value is separated from the remark code.
New attributes in this release are annotated with an asterisk.
_______________________________________________________________________________
---- File ---- Table
Attribute information Column name Result Sample
_______________________________________________________________________________
Agency Code agency_cd X X X
USGS site number site_no X X X
Begin date sample_dt X X X
Begin time sample_tm X X X
End date* sample_end_dt X X X
End time* sample_end_tm X X X
Time datum* sample_start_time_datum_cd X X X
Time datum reliability code* tm_datum_rlbty_cd X X X
Agency collecting sample code coll_ent_cd X X X
Sample medium code medium_cd X X X
Project identifier* project_cd / / /
Geologic unit code* aqfr_cd / / /
Taxonomic unit code* tu_id X X X
Body-part code* body_part_id X X X
Analysis-source code anl_src_cd / / /
Hydrologic-condition code hyd_cond_cd / / /
Sample-type code samp_type_cd / / /
Hydrologic-event code hyd_event_cd / / /
Message from lab* sample_lab_cm_tx / / /
Parameter code parm_cd X X X
Remark code remark_cd X X X
Parameter value result_va X X X
Result value qualifier codes* val_qual_tx X \ /
Method code meth_cd X - -
Data-quality indicator code* dqi_cd X - -
Reporting level* rpt_lev_va X - -
Reporting-level type code* rpt_lev_cd X - -
Lab standard deviation* lab_std_va X - -
Preparation set identifier* prep_set_no / - -
Result preparation date* prep_dt / - -
Analysis set number* anl_set_no / - -
Result analysis date* anl_dt / - -
Lab result comment* result_lab_cm_tx / - -
Analyzing entity code anl_ent_cd X - -
______________________________________________________________________________
Other new retrieval options include the ability
to retrieve sampling date and time in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC)
or in the time zone used by the sampling personnel. When all results
for a sample are retrieved on each output row, the user has the option
to segregate remark codes from numeric values in separate columns,
facilitating ease of use of the retrieved data with other software.
Are you looking to regularly retrieve information from the this site system? If so, then this new FAQ can help lead you in the right direction to effectively obtaining your information with minimal disruption of web services for everyone.
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey