National Hydrography Dataset, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. 2002-2016
Summary
The National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) and Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) are used to portray surface water on The National Map. The NHD represents the drainage network with features such as rivers, streams, canals, lakes, ponds, coastline, dams, and streamgages. An important use of the NHD is the analysis of surface-water systems. This analysis is possible because many types of location information can be linked to the NHD, such as flow-volume, velocity, temperature, water chemistry, pollution control classifications, aquatic species habitat, recreation designations, or water rights. Such network-linked data is typically maintained by various organizations at Federal, State, and local levels, as well as research, conservation, academic, [...]
Summary
The National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) and Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) are used to portray surface water on The National Map. The NHD represents the drainage network with features such as rivers, streams, canals, lakes, ponds, coastline, dams, and streamgages. An important use of the NHD is the analysis of surface-water systems. This analysis is possible because many types of location information can be linked to the NHD, such as flow-volume, velocity, temperature, water chemistry, pollution control classifications, aquatic species habitat, recreation designations, or water rights. Such network-linked data is typically maintained by various organizations at Federal, State, and local levels, as well as research, conservation, academic, and industry organizations. USGS encourages organizations who link their data to the NHD to share their data. To that end, we now encourage organizations to post their network-linked data to the USGS
ScienceBase, National Hydrography Dataset Linked Data Registry.
U.S. Geological Survey has placed these hydro linked datasets here in to demonstrate use of FGDC compliant metadata and searchable tags suitable for other hydro linked datasets. If you have data linked to the NHD or NHDPlus, we suggest that you tag your data with keyword themes in the item's metadata similar to how we have tagged the datasets in this community. There are several ways to create metadata for your items for use in ScienceBase: 1) Directly enter the tags in ScienceBase as free text. 2) The Esri metadata editor native to ArcCatalog. 3) The USGS Online Metadata Editor at <https://www1.usgs.gov/csas/ome/editor.htm>, 3) The USGS MetadataWizard, a python script with graphical user interface that can be used in ArcCatalog. This tool is downloadable from ScienceBase, and also linked to this community as an associated item. 4) Other commercial XML editors, such as XML Notepad. 5) Finally, we have attached a text file with suggested hydro linked data tags, as well as a metadata template, HydroLinkedStarterTemplate_FGDC.xml.
