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Documentation

The links below lead to documentation for various APIs hosted on https://api.waterdata.usgs.gov. Click the name of the APIs you're interested in to see the full set of documentation available for the service.

OGC APIs

These endpoints provide access to USGS water data using the OGC API family of standards. These APIs will provide access to a wide array of USGS water data, including continuous sensor measurements, daily values, and metadata about individual time series and monitoring locations. These endpoints all use a common set of standards for API behavior and returning data in standardized formats, making it easy to access USGS data from R and from Python, or directly from your GIS application.

USGS Water Quality API

The USGS Samples API provides access to USGS water quality information.

Water Quality Portal APIs

The Water Quality Portal API provides access to publicly available discrete water-quality data from the USGS, EPA, and over 400 state, federal, tribal, and local agencies.

National Imagery Management System

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.

Legacy Water Services

The original Water Services provides production-ready API access to USGS water data.

Get an API Key

This page allows you to register an API key for use with USGS water data APIs. Using an API key gives you access to higher rate limits when accessing USGS APIs, meaning you can make more requests per hour