USGS Water Data for the Nation

This collection provides access to water-resources data collected at approximately 1.5 million sites in all 50 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Online access to this data is organized around the categories surface water, groundwater, water quality, and water use.

Surface-water data includes more than 850,000 station years of time-series data that describe stream levels, streamflow (discharge), reservoir and lake levels, surface-water quality, and rainfall. The data are collected by automatic recorders and manual field measurements at installations across the Nation.

Groundwater data consists of more than 850,000 records of wells, springs, test holes, tunnels, drains, and excavations in the United States. Available site descriptive information includes well location information such as latitude and longitude, well depth, and aquifer. The USGS annually monitors groundwater levels in thousands of wells in the United States. Groundwater level data are collected and stored as either discrete field-water-level measurements or as continuous time-series data from automated recorders. 

Water-quality data includes chemical, physical, and biological properties of water, sediment and tissue samples from across the Nation. The discrete sample data base is a compilation of over 4.4 million historical water quality analyses in the USGS district data bases through September 2005. At selected surface-water and groundwater sites, the USGS maintains instruments that continuously record physical and chemical characteristics of the water including pH, specific conductance, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and percent dissolved-oxygen saturation. Supporting data such as air temperature and barometric pressure are also available at some sites. At sites where this information is transmitted automatically, data are available from the current data system.

Water use refers to water that is used for specific purposes. Water-use data is collected by area type (State, county, watershed or aquifer) and source such as rivers or groundwater, and category such as public supply or irrigation. Water-use data has been reported every five years since 1950, for years ending in "0" and "5". The USGS works in cooperation with local, State, and Federal agencies as well as academic and private organizations to collect and report total withdrawals.