USGS Water Data APIs
This site is the home for modernized access to USGS water data in machine-readable formats via REST APIs, a common type of web service programs use to search and download data. These services provide USGS water data, ranging from continuous measurements of streamflow to information about individual USGS sites and more. The links below lead to documentation for how to use each service, and web forms to build queries for each endpoint.
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Beta: Daily Values
Interested in historical summarized daily data about our nation's streams, lakes and wells? This API provides a wealth of historical water data. Daily data is available for USGS water sites include mean, median, maximum, minimum, and/or other derived values.
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Water Quality Services
The USGS and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) each collect vast amounts of water quality data. The Water Quality Portal provides publicly available discrete water-quality data from the USGS, EPA, and over 400 state, federal, tribal, and local agencies in Water Quality Exchange (WQX) 3 formats, while the USGS Samples API provides direct API access to USGS discrete water quality observations.
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OGC-Compliant APIs
USGS offers Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant APIs, which will let you download continuous service measurements, discrete field measurements, metadata about monitoring locations, and more.
These APIs are currently in beta status: they may be subject to change and should not be relied upon for production workloads.
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Legacy Water Services
Looking for the original USGS production web services? Find our legacy, production-ready offerings including data about our nation's streams, lakes and wells. Water Services provides USGS water data in machine-readable formats via REST APIs.
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National Imagery Management System (NIMS)
The National Imagery Management System (NIMS) is a comprehensive infrastructure designed to collect, store, process, and deliver imagery collected by cameras managed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for public and scientific use. NIMS supports a wide range of hydrologic and environmental monitoring applications.