whatNWISdata: USGS data availability

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

USGS data availability

Description

Imports a table of available parameters, period of record, and count. See https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/site-service/ for more information.

Usage

whatNWISdata(..., convertType = TRUE)

Arguments

...	see https://waterservices.usgs.gov/docs/site-service/ for a complete list of options. A list of arguments can also be supplied.
convertType	logical, defaults to TRUE. If TRUE, the function will convert the data to dates, datetimes, numerics based on a standard algorithm. If false, everything is returned as a character

Details

This function requires users to create their own arguments based on the NWIS web services. It is a more complicated function to use compared to other NWIS functions such as readNWISdv(), readNWISuv(), etc. However, this function adds a lot of flexibility to the possible queries. If the "service" argument is included, the results will be filtered to the proper data_type_cd. This is a great function to use before a large data set, by filtering down the number of sites that have useful data.

Value

A data frame with the following columns:

Name	Type	Description
agency_cd	character	The NWIS code for the agency reporting the data
site_no	character	The USGS site number
station_nm	character	Site name
site_tp_cd	character	Site type
dec_lat_va	numeric	Decimal latitude
dec_long_va	numeric	Decimal longitude
coord_acy_cd	character	Latitude-longitude accuracy
dec_coord_datum_cd	character	Decimal Latitude-longitude datum
alt_va	character	Altitude of Gage or land surface
alt_acy_va	character	Altitude accuracy
alt_datum_cd	character	Altitude datum
huc_cd	character	Hydrologic unit code
data_type_cd	character	Data type
parm_cd	character	Parameter code
stat_cd	character	Statistical code
dd_nu	character	Internal database key
loc_web_ds	character	Additional measurement description
medium_grp_cd	character	Medium group code
parm_grp_cd	character	Parameter group code
srs_id	character	SRS ID
access_cd	character	Access code
begin_date	Date	Begin date
end_date	Date	End date
count_nu	integer	Record count
parameter_group_nm	character	Parameter group name
parameter_nm	character	Parameter name
casrn	character	Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Registry Number
srsname	character	Substance Registry Services
parameter_units	character	Parameter units

There are also several useful attributes attached to the data frame:

Name	Type	Description
url	character	The url used to generate the data
comment	character	Header comments from the RDB file
queryTime	POSIXct	The time the data was returned

See Also

read_waterdata_ts_meta()

Examples

# see ?read_waterdata_ts_meta

#site1 <- whatWQPsamples(siteid = "USGS-01594440")

#type <- "Stream"

#sites <- whatWQPsamples(countycode = "US:55:025", siteType = type)

#lakeSites_samples <- whatWQPsamples(siteType = "Lake, Reservoir, Impoundment",
#                                    countycode = "US:55:025")

dataRetrieval documentation built on June 28, 2025, 1:08 a.m.