get_catchment_characteristics: Get Catchment Characteristics

In nhdplusTools: NHDPlus Tools

Get Catchment Characteristics

Description

Downloads (subsets of) catchment characteristics from a cloud data store. See get_characteristics_metadata for available characteristics.

When source = "usgs" (the default), data is retrieved from: Wieczorek, M.E., Jackson, S.E., and Schwarz, G.E., 2018, Select Attributes for NHDPlus Version 2.1 Reach Catchments and Modified Network Routed Upstream Watersheds for the Conterminous United States (ver. 3.0, January 2021): U.S. Geological Survey data release, \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.5066/F7765D7V")}.

When source = "streamcat", data is retrieved from the EPA StreamCat dataset via the StreamCatTools package (must be installed separately). The aoi parameter controls the area of interest for StreamCat queries.

Usage

get_catchment_characteristics(
  varname,
  ids,
  reference_fabric = "nhdplusv2",
  source = "usgs",
  aoi = "cat"
)

Arguments

varname	character vector of desired variables. If repeated varnames are provided, they will be downloaded once but duplicated in the output. For source = "streamcat", use StreamCat metric names (see get_characteristics_metadata(source = "streamcat")).
ids	numeric vector of identifiers (comids) from the specified fabric
reference_fabric	(not used) will be used to allow future specification of alternate reference fabrics
source	character "usgs" (default) or "streamcat".
aoi	character area of interest for StreamCat queries. One of "cat" (local catchment, default), "ws" (total upstream watershed), "catrp100" (catchment riparian 100m buffer), "wsrp100" (watershed riparian 100m buffer), or "other" (for metrics like BankfullDepth, IWI, etc.). Ignored when source = "usgs" where the area of interest is encoded in the variable name prefix (e.g. CAT_, TOT_, ACC_).

Examples

  get_catchment_characteristics("CAT_BFI", c(5329343, 5329427))

nhdplusTools documentation built on May 26, 2026, 5:06 p.m.