NHD Stewardship

The National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) contains detailed geospatial information about the Nation's surface water. Making these data accurate will be an ongoing task as the landscape changes and users demand greater accuracy.

Just as building the NHD required a large partnership across the nation, maintaining the NHD also requires an extensive partnership, and can best be accomplished by those closest to the hydrography. Users within the states and federal lands understand the hydrography around them and are motivated to ensure the accuracy of the NHD to meet their business needs; therefore, they are ideally suited to become the stewards of the data; an agency in each state will manage the maintenance activities within the state. The maintenance will be performed by that agency or other agencies in the state. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) will facilitate the overall process, providing national management, coordination, tools, standards, documentation, training, quality assurance, data archival, and data distribution. Updates to the NHD will be made by the stewards, transmitted to the USGS, processed, and made available in the national dataset distribution.

Locate your area's stewardship POC

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