August 2010 - Introducing two important USGS Water Web Services

The U.S. Geological Survey is pleased to announce the availability of two important new water web services:

Users now have the ability to retrieve USGS current condition instantaneous values data for multiple sites with a single request. The web service provides data in Extensible Markup Language (XML). The current tab-delimited (RDB) file format supported by the USGS Water Data for the Nation site is also supported by the web service.
This web service is production quality and highly available, meaning that it is redundantly hosted, closely monitored and is available 24/7/365. In most cases, you can expect a faster response using the web service than using the USGS Water Data for the Nation site. The data in the web service are identical to the data provided in the USGS Water Data for the Nation site.
You can select data from multiple sites with a single request using a broad set of filters, such as by state, county, watershed and latitude/longitude box. If you have programs that currently download tab-delimited current condition data, you should seriously consider using this new web service instead.
Learn more about the web service
Experiment with the web service

Users can request basic information about a specific USGS hydrological site or a range of sites within a given latitude and longitude. These sites can be filtered for active, inactive or current condition only sites. Filtering is also possible by certain site types such as surface water, groundwater or atmospheric. A number of XML-based output formats are provided, including two that ease the display of sites on Google Maps and Google Earth.
Learn more and test the web service

This web service has been available for some time, but has moved from "beta" to production status. Daily values are derived by summarizing time-series data for each day for the period of record. This service is available as both a REST and a SOAP web service.
Learn more and test the web service

The interim single site instantaneous values web service will be formally retired on October 1, 2010. Please update your applications to use the new Instantaneous Values web service by this date.

In 2011, additional improvements are planned for all of the above web services including new features and data delivery formats. We will provide details of these planned changes later this year on the USGS Water Web Services Site. If you have suggestions on features you would like to see in the instantaneous values, daily values or site web service, please send them to the USGS Water Web Services Team

If you have questions about any of these web services, please contact the USGS Water Web Services Team