readNWISuse: Water use data retrieval from USGS (NWIS)

In dataRetrieval: Retrieval Functions for USGS and EPA Hydrology and Water Quality Data

Water use data retrieval from USGS (NWIS)

Description

Retrieves water use data from USGS Water Use Data for the Nation. See https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/wu for more information. All available use categories for the supplied arguments are retrieved.

Usage

readNWISuse(
  stateCd,
  countyCd,
  years = "ALL",
  categories = "ALL",
  convertType = TRUE,
  transform = FALSE
)

Arguments

stateCd	could be character (full name, abbreviation, id), or numeric (id). Only one is accepted per query.
countyCd	could be character (name, with or without "County", or "ALL"), numeric (id), or NULL, which will return state or national data depending on the stateCd argument. "ALL" may also be supplied, which will return data for every county in a state. Can be a vector of counties in the same state.
years	integer Years for data retrieval. Must be years ending in 0 or 5. Default is all available years.
categories	character categories of water use. Defaults to "ALL". Specific categories must be supplied as two- letter abbreviations as seen in the URL when using the NWIS water use web interface. Note that there are different codes for national and state level data.
convertType	logical defaults to TRUE. If TRUE, the function will convert the data to numerics based on a standard algorithm. Years, months, and days (if appliccable) are also returned as numerics in separate columns. If convertType is false, everything is returned as a character.
transform	logical only intended for use with national data. Defaults to FALSE, with data being returned as presented by the web service. If TRUE, data will be transformed and returned with column names, which will reformat national data to be similar to state data.

Value

A data frame with at least the year of record, and all available statistics for the given geographic parameters. County and state fields will be included as appropriate.

Examples

# All data for a county
allegheny <- readNWISuse(stateCd = "Pennsylvania", countyCd = "Allegheny")

# Data for an entire state for certain years
ohio <- readNWISuse(years = c(2000, 2005, 2010), stateCd = "OH", countyCd = NULL)

# Data for an entire state, county by county
pr <- readNWISuse(years = c(2000, 2005, 2010), stateCd = "PR", countyCd = "ALL")

# All national-scale data, transforming data frame to named columns from named rows
national <- readNWISuse(stateCd = NULL, countyCd = NULL, transform = TRUE)

# Washington, DC data
dc <- readNWISuse(stateCd = "DC", countyCd = NULL)

# data for multiple counties, with different input formatting
paData <- readNWISuse(stateCd = "42", countyCd = c("Allegheny County", "BUTLER", 1, "031"))

# retrieving two specific categories for an entire state
ks <- readNWISuse(stateCd = "KS", countyCd = NULL, categories = c("IT", "LI"))

dataRetrieval documentation built on April 4, 2025, 5:21 a.m.